Ree is dismayed when she sees herself and the rest of the crew in the headlines the next day. She also learns that Scuzzy and Wuzz have started up a fan club for the group and are merchandising the heck out of them.
They decide to head back to Tatooine to look through Jabba's palace and see if they can learn anything more about the Skywalker seal. Z is enthusiastic, since he wants to find Jabba's treasure, but he mentions that the place has a reputation of vanishing would-be treasure hunters., and Oola has heard stories about brain-stealing robots that Jabba used to have guarding the place. Z suggests that they take Salek Endek with them to help with the traps Jabba undoubtedly left lying around.
Z also reports that he's heard nothing about bounty hunters who use ARC trooper armor, which means that this guy isn't a bounty hunter.
When Ree gets back to her room, she finds an envelope that's been slid under her door: old data records from the Clone Wars describing a mission where Anakin and Obi Wan went to Thule to destroy a weapon called the Dark Reaper, which converted a planet's energy into a destructive beam. Ree looks up the reference on the old temple computer core, then shows it to Kyp. He's worried about the possibility of Thule having rebuilt that weapon.
On the way back from Kyp's room, she passes some padawans in the hall who start giggling when they see what direction she's coming from. She rolls her eyes at what she assumes is fangirling.
The next morning, she meets with Endek, who says he has heard troubling stories. He tries to dissuade her, but grumpily agrees to come--insists on it, actually--when she won't change her mind.
Kedrihm'Val speaks to the two Jedi again. They tell him the Jedi found the coin there under a marker stone, and left it when they realized it was for the Chosen One. These Jedi are young, and one of them turns out to be quite the Chosen One fanboy. He proudly displays his collection of Chosen One comics and says all sorts of alarmingly naive things about Luke. The other Jedi is more useful: he points out that the coin is said to have information relevant to the Chosen One on it, so if Luke has it, then he probably has learned quite a bit from it by now.
So. The B'omarr monks were the first ones to settle Tatooine, about 700 years ago. It seems likely that they recognized the marker as a holy thing, and built their monastery around it. The monks are apparently gone, but there might be some information on early interactions with them left in the first settlement, which was built around the crashed Dowager Queen starship.
Z thinks it's likely that nobody would've bothered such apparently useless information, so there's a good chance it's still there.
Luke tells them he found the coin in Jabba's treasure store (much to Z's disgust; apparently he and Han just waltzed in and then back out again), where Jabba apparently put it after he found it much deeper in the complex.
Ree finds another note shoved under her door, this one about a Sith named Set Harth. Records in the old computer say that he's a mythical figure, a fallen Jedi who hunted Sith secrets. He was fascinated by the Sith and their mystique, and was allegedly born before the Mandalorian Wars, but the stories indicate that he would still be alive.
Ree wonders, could this be the secret leader of Thule? Or more likely, someone who's masquerading as this man? She checks up on who has been delivering these notes. The guards say they're brought to the temple by a messenger service. She brings this information to Kyp, who's likewise a little disturbed by this anonymous help. He tells her she'll need to attend a Masters' conference.
On the way out, she passes Luke in the hall. "Kyp has some information for you," Ree mentions to him. "Ah," says Luke meaningfully. "Is he in there now?" "Yep!" she replies cheerily. Heh, even Luke thinks there's something up.
The next morning is time to go. Z is drunk. Oola introduces her new droid, INON. He's chipper and sweet. SARR is revolted.
Endek knows of someone with ARC armor. The guy frequents the Rim and loves a challenge. Z, annoyed, says he's putting in better traps on Ree's balcony.
Re: "Don't kill any pigeons."
Z: "Why not?"
Ree: "They're living things."
Z: "So?"
Ree: "Z, don't kill any pigeons."
Ree thinks it might be easier to simply move her quarters. "But don't you like where your room is?" asks Z. "Well, it's convenient," admits Ree. "I figured it was convenient," replies Z, who considers that she's just down the hall from Kyp.
When they enter the old palace, Ree and Kedrihm'Val both sense telepathic chatter in the air. Ree follows it to a secret passage in a wall. Down some old stairs, she encounters a spider-like droid with a bubble holding a brain. It backs away into a room when it sees them. Ree, 'hearing' it talking with others, approaches and asks for directions. They're polite enough about it.
So, they head down more stairs, and Endek disarms several vicious traps. They find a square block with the propechy of the Chosen One written on it. In Galactic Standard. There's a hole where the coin apparently fit. Endek says that no one native to this galaxy built this thing. It's the Architects again. The prophecy was theirs? Why should they even care?
When one of them mentions the name Skywalker during the discussion, the ground suddenly shifts a little. They all look at each other for a moment, then Kedrihm'Val says, "Luke." It shifts again. It's a verbal lock, they realize. Recite the Skywalker family and it opens the floor into another room. Down there, the walls are covered with Architect writing. There are two perfectly rendered life-size statues of Luke and Leia, each of whom hold their own coin. There are no holocrons in them or anything, but the patterns on them seem to be personalized. Ree takes those. Oola knows enough Architect at this point to know that the walls talk about balance and the universe being thrown out of balance--damaged and repaired. Something about the gate on Ree's planet and the Infinity Gate. She can gather that something hasn't been done yet.
Z finds a hidden case in the floor: a box for the two coins, with four more inside. One of these is a variant on the Sent family medallion with circuit-like patterns. Dalt, obviously. One's a variant of Ree's family seal (a fact which Ree does not recognize and denies when they point it out to her). One is kind of roguish, and the other has primitive supernatural symbols on it. Jude and Mora?
Z wonders quietly to the others "what you do with a Jedi in denial of her destiny." And how did the Architects interpret all this? Just because they saw clearly doesn't mean they understood it the same way, after all. They seem to have identified Luke and Leia as some kind of rulers or royalty.
On the way back out, the monks tell Ree they would like to repay her for her tolerance someday by helping her toward enlightenment. There's a vaguely menacing undertone in that...but they don't seem inclined to mess with this group.
On the way home, Ree has a vision of an evil Force user with long white hair. He breaks open the Jedi prison ship to get someone. She passes this on to Luke at the Jedi temple. He says everything's fine there, but they can double security for a while, just in case.
When they land, there are reporters waiting. Ree manages to beg off, and hurries in to give the coins to Luke. He comments that Leia's going to be ticked. She hates getting involved in this stuff. Ree makes it halfway down the hall when she hears Luke's voice in her head calling her back. He hands her her coin, and also suggests she watch the past week's news. She also remembers to ask to have her room changed. When he asks why, she says, "Because people keep breaking in and Z wants to mine the crap out of my balcony." "You know what," says Luke, "I'll have your rooms changed."
And he does. So now she's right next to Kyp.
Ree discovers that Luke was referring to a new comic strip about her. Written by Dyt Urron, it follows her entirely fictional new adventures. Kyp's not in his room when she calls on him. Apparently the Force clued him in on the danger.
Dalt says the walls tell the story of Luke and Leia. Nothing particularly new. Then he gets onto his 'give everyone the Force' jag again. He makes a good argument for it, really.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Sith on a plane!
Now to find that leak. Kyp thinks the Council is above suspicion. Ree reminds him that members have been compromised before: remember when Dalt possessed Master Roon? But they can leave that for later if they don’t find something else. They figure they’ll start with the Council chambers.
Sure enough, Oola spots a signal coming from one of the decorations. There’s a listening device hidden in a Naboo sculpture that the Naboo contingent had given the Jedi as a gift. The signal leads back to the Senate building. Oola heads over there with Ree tagging along, and finds it leads to the offices of Dev Miat, the Naboo Senator. Ree tells Luke, who says to leave it there and learn more about Miat. Oola suggests using the bug to pass false information.
Erin tells them that Miat is the leading pacifist in the Senate. He’s the one who’s been blocking actions against the Thule, along with his small but influential clique. He’s been in the Senate almost since it reformed. Oola’s brother says he’s a really wonderful guy. Very idealistic. Even Oola’s brother has trouble imagining him being a traitor.
They decide to sneak in to look around. Disguising themselves as janitors, they find the signal leading to a receiver in the desk of Cyndel Kenar, who’s one of Miat’s aides. She’s in charge of domestic relations for his group, which means she sent the gift. Erin tells them Kenar comes from a prominent Naboo noble lineage. They’ll have to go to Naboo for more, as there’s apparently something odd about her family. Luke suggests they be delicate, since this could impact diplomatic relations.
Interesting place, Naboo. Not only did they follow Severan Telik there, and find a secret lab of the Emperor’s, but Dalt’s also got a base there. Speaking of which, Kedrihm swings by to ask Dalt about it before they go.
Dalt says that he used that base for personal work, not for the Emperor. Also mentions that the Corporate Sector base holds many of his more marketable inventions. Kedrihm comments about how many of their leads head to Naboo. Dalt: “Something about Naboo...” There’s something about Naboo, but he can’t remember. Says the memories are coming back slowly (oh, the memories are coming back? There's something to mark). Anyway, when Kedrihm asks about Palpatine’s people, Dalt says he thinks the Emperor killed all his family. He knows the Kenars a little from diplomatic parties and whatnot: very into history, always involved with the monarchy (Dalt mocks the idea of an elected monarchy, which also has Kedrihm confused, as the language seems to contradict). The Kenars have served as rulers for hundreds of years.
On the way out, Kedrihm swings by Kyp to suggest that they might consider letting Dalt help with Grievous. It’s unlikely to teach him anything new in cybernetics, but it could give him a distraction. Kyp seems inclined to think about it.
On beautiful Naboo, Onna hunts up info on the Kenar family while the others track down Dalt’s lab. Not hard, since he told them where it was. It’s in a big warehouse, housing a Naboo starship. The thing doesn’t work, but the pilot chair features a control helmet that’s an amplifier for Force illusions. The ship’s also rigged to produce multiple false transponder and radar signals: the ultimate camouflage ship. The rest of the place houses similar experiments in using the Force to enhance existing technology. Oddly, there’s nothing the least bit harmful in the entire place. Did Dalt just hang out here…or did he hide the more alarming stuff from prying Naboo do-gooder eyes?
They indeed find a secret compartment in the floor. It’s trapped with an odd gas, and contains a box locked so it can be opened by Dalt’s genetic signature...but only if Dalt’s in a state of heightened distress. The box holds journals, pictures of his family, and his lightsaber. The journal simply holds logs about building the stuff on the ship and the reasoning behind incorporating the Force into technology. They take all that, along with the control headset from the ship.
Catch up to Onna and SARR. They’ve found a picture of a regal older man with his arm around a young Palpatine. The man was Prince of Theed (a diplomatic position concerned with training young people into politics) Teras Kenar, Cyndel’s great-grandfather. After noting that Palpatine got into politics very young, even by Naboo standards, Onna tells them that Teras was a more than upstanding citizen. He died of a heart attack around the age of 60, and was found by Palpatine, who was 20 at the time. Most of the Kenar children died in accidents within the next 10 years. The family nearly died out. After the Emperor was reported dead—within days—Noah Kenar came forward with proof that he was related to the family. He’s Cyndel’s dad. But he died 3 years ago, just before Cyndel entered politics. Again, she’s the one who found the body.
They decide to go talk to Cyndel’s family, presenting it as a research interest. They tell them more about Teras. He was practically idolized in his own time as a saint. Always helping people, doing medical research, concerned with healing skills. They think he would’ve been a doctor if he weren’t a politician. His private library is held at the museum. They check that out and find a secret compartment on the underside of his desk that’s gooey with badness. It holds a vid, which they take to the ship to watch.
The vid shows Teras and Palpatine doing Sithy things. They refer to each other as Plagius (Teras) and Sidious (Palpatine, of course). They’re working on dead bodies, which mostly don’t do anything and which they declare as failures, until one finally gets up, to the horror of the Starwind’s crew. At this, Teras exclaims that it’s “only a step from this to creating life!”
And now it’s obviously time to questin Cyndel. They call Luke and tell him they found Palpatine’s master. “Alive?!” exclaims Luke, sitting up and reaching for his lightsaber. “No, no.” They explain a little; he says to head back and they’ll talk.
On the way, Oola finds that the gas was knockout gas designed to work specifically on Dalt. What is up with this? And Lydia recalls the story about how Anakin Skywalker “had no parents.” What if that was true? What if Palpatine figured out how to...make people?
When they get back, Luke hauls the Council into Kyp’s room to avoid the listening device so he can inform everyone. Kyp’s annoyed by the invasion. They give Dalt his stuff (except the lightsaber and ship thingie). Dalt’s vaguely suspicious, but doesn’t react particularly oddly. Away from him, Z wonders what to do if Dalt tries to kill his clone. Which one should be living as Lexi’s father? Who has the right? What about his family’s opinions?
SARR interrupts: “Alarms all over the Senate building.” Ree breaks for the door, Kedrihm close on her heels. The hubbub is coming from Cyndel’s office. Her desk is cleaned out, the place is a wreck, and two people are dead: one by lightsaber, one burned to ash. The window is shattered. Ree leaps out, Kedrihm behind her, and they both feel a trail of taint in the Force. Not just Dark Side—it feels like Sith.
Oola gets the Senate’s security tapes: Cyndel at her desk, spaced out like a farseeing trance at lunch. She comes to, Force lightnings the aide who comes in with a cheery greeting, pops a lightsaber out of her desk and bisects another, then digs up some things and flees.
Ree traces her to the Naboo consulate. No one answers her hail. Oola says she sees no lifesigns inside, so Ree and Kedrihm hop the fence and go in. Lightsaber marks all over. Oola taps the security tapes there to see that she tore in, killed people, grabbed some stuff, and fled in a speeder. They follow in a second speeder. Her trail leads to the nearest spaceport. Ree grabs the closest official: “Close down the spaceport, there’s a Sith on the loose!” Then they sneak onto the ship Cyndel got onto, tracking her to her suite...where she’s on the ceiling. Attack!
Ree shouts at passengers to get down. Kedrihm helps clear them out while she takes on Cyndel. Ree notes that Cyndel is protecting her backpack excessively. The ship begins to move as they fight, though it was supposed to be stopped. Cyndel tugs away Ree’s lightsaber with the Force, but Ree just pulls out another one and cuts the pack off her. A black book tumbles out.
Meanwhile, Oola can’t stop the ship—-the pilots have control—-so Kedrihm heads toward the cockpit. The door is locked down, maximum security. He squares himself, then tears the door out. The pilots inside are shocked, but won’t stop the ship. ”The lady told us to take off,” they keep saying. Kedrihm can’t break the mind effect, so he simply pulls them away from the console and leaves it to Oola.
Cyndel flees, Ree chases. Oola drives the ship in circles since she can’t make it stop. Cyndel breaks Ree’s borrowed lightsaber, so Ree pulls out another, much to Cyndel’s disgust. Ree comms to Kedrihm about the evil Sith book lying in the compartment. He knocks the pilots out and heads back for it, but when he enters the compartment, the book starts speaking to him, tempting him with promises of knowledge to help his people and stop Thule. He manages to shake it off and drops it into one of Cyndel’s suitcases.
Oola brings the ship back in to land not too far from the spaceport, to Cyndel’s great frustration. She leaps off, Ree following, and they both land on a passing speeder. Ree sets herself to protect the driver.
Oola spots people from the temple heading to the Senate. It occurs to her to wonder how SARR knew so quickly that something was happening. Kyp’s sitting watch on the comm, so she fills him in and he heads toward the spaceport to give Ree backup.
Cyndel cuts the speeder in half, falling away from Ree. Ree grabs the driver and leaps to another speeder, where she shoves him into the passenger seat, then takes off after Cyndel.
Kedrihm gets off the ship when it comes to a stop, but the area’s completely empty and he has a really bad feeling. Someone bad is standing in the shadow of an alley. Someone bad, angry, and Zabrak. He comms Oola: “Oola...I think Drath is watching me.” She tells Kyp, who’s very alarmed for a different reason. He heads back to the temple to check on Anakin.
Cyndel flees into a casino, where Ree follows, warning security that there’s a dangerous person insde.
The case flies out of Kedrihm’s hand. He grabs it again and gets pulled along for the ride, swinging a kick at Drath as he gets close enough. “Do you have a lightsaber?” asks Drath. “Too bad for you.” But he doesn't quite manage to Force lightning Kedrihm.
The casino’s dark and confusing. Ree can’t spot Cyndel at first, till she hears a whistle and turns to see Cyndel standing atop the bar. The bottles of liquor on the shelves behind her shiver into glass splinters and a rain of alcohol, and Cyndel holds out a lit match..which she drops.
Kedrihm attacks, driving Drath backward off the edge of the platform. Neither will let go of the suitcase, so Kedrihm falls with him, coming down feet-first on top of Drath as they land.
Ree trusts the fire suppression system to do its job, gunning for Cyndel instead, throwing her across the room. Oola gets to the casino in time to see Ree cut off Cyndel’s arm with her lightsaber. The shock makes the Sith pass out.
Drath and Kedrihm square off while Z catches up to them, but they keep leaping and rolling off the platforms, so he has trouble keeping up. Drath manages to yank the case from Kedrihm’s hands and leaps down, but Kedrihm follows him and pulls it back. Then Drath knocks him over the edge of the next platform before Kedrihm can get a good grasp on the case, and they both tumble, to coming up fighting over the suitcase. Drath rips the case out of Kedrihm’s hands, sending it flying over the edge as they both lose their grip. Drath makes to leap after it, but Kedrihm kicks him backward. Drath, looking startled, exclaims, “Book!” Kedrihm calls out, “Z, get it!” Z dives, but Drath catches his foot on the way past. Kedrihm punches Drath in the face so he staggers back from Z, but he grabs Kedrihm’Val and they both go over the edge. Leaping for the suitcase, they both snag it at the same time...and Drath thumbs the lock, sending clothes flying and the book tumbling out. As much to get away from the damned thing as anything, Kedrihm Force-pushes Drath over the edge and follows him down, keeping him from getting back up to the book while Z retrieves it. Drath calls Z’s flechette launcher to him, aiming it at Kedrihm’Val, who flips out of the way and drains its energy away. So Drath clubs him with it instead, then tries to Force-grip Kedrihm’Val’s balls...which he just manages to negate (thankfully).
Drath looks up to see Z making away with the book safely tucked back in the suitcase, and shouts, “Are you too much of a coward to face me?” Seeing Z hesitate, Kedrihm calls, “Just think how frustrated he’ll be if you get away with it.” “Coward not to face me!” Drath snarls, seeing Z start to turn away. Z stops again, then says reluctantly, “This thing is important, isn’t it?” He sighs when Kedrihm nods, then Oola calls on the comm, “Z, I need you here!”
Kedrihm tackles Drath to the ground to make sure he can’t follow Z. “Gay,” mutters Drath, but Kedrihm’Val doesn’t care about those sorts of insults, and replies, “Whatever you like,” knowing it’ll irritate him. Of course, that backfires when Drath bites his ear off. Kedrihm’Val snarls in pain, then nerve-pinches him, knocking him unconscious.
About that time, Ree and Kyp get there, having seen the two of them fight-falling down through Coruscant. Ree helps Kedrihm with his ear while he catches his breath. Kyp tells them that no one escaped except for Drath. He’s fairly impressed, actually: the Jedi prison ship holds Force users by essentially depriving them of environment, forcing them into Force hibernation. Drath’s just such a brute that he could endure that long enough to get out.
Safely back at the temple with the evil book and two new prisoners, they have to figure out what to do with the thing. Kedrihm: “Can anyone else hear it talking to them?” Others: “No.” Kyp: “Yes.” They look at him. Oola: “It’s just a ‘you guys’ thing, I guess.” Z asks, “Will it shut up if I threaten it with my stream of justice?” Ree’s aghast, but it does indeed shut up. Which makes it even more creepy, since apparently that means it’s somewhat sentient. So Kyp just lightsabers the blasted thing.
Oola shows off her new droid to Dalt (she converted the destroyer droid into an astromech, but kept it in the same body with an assortment of weapons), who thinks it’s pretty cool. But he wonders what’s with this crew and alarming droids.
The next morning, Kyp is overjoyed about the possibilities for movies. Ree’s all over the news, which talks about almost nothing but how she chased down a Sith in the spaceport. Kedrihm’Val and Z are getting good coverage, too, much to the joy of the producers of the new “Primal Justice” holo-show. Ree still doesn’t like the movies, since she thinks it fosters the wrong impression about Jedi. She’s uncomfortable with the public idolizing them like they can do no wrong. She tells Kyp she thinks that the Jedi should do some community service so that people can get to know them better as people and be less intimidated by them. “Except for Luke,” Kyp says. “Luke is intimidating.”
Onto other business. Kyp tells them that apparently Dooku founded Thule, which may be house Ventress got out there. The old computer core doesn’t hold much else on the Uncharted Territories: just information on Outbound Flight and a bit about the Chiss. There is a bit of interesting data on the Infinity Gate, however. They already know it’s a powerful Architect artifact, but apparently what the Architects used it for was as a power source for their other technology: the planet movers and so on. So, it was on Dathomir, and the Sith tower holds a synchronous position between it and Yavin. Then (other than the old Sith temples) what’s up with Yavin? Kyp doesn’t know.
Well, they need to go to Yavin IV anyway, to talk to the Dathomiri students and see what they can learn from them about Dathomir. Thrawn and the Republic are finally ready to square off with Thule (well, Thrawn’s been ready), so the crew’s job is to keep Thule away from whatever it is they’re actually after. And that probably means Dathomir. So Ree wants to fill in their gaps on what they know about the planet and her aunt’s setup there so they can go in prepared.
Before they leave, Kedrihm asks Dalt about that gunk he got injected with on Abindosan a while back. Why did he keep seeing visions of Darth Maul? Since Kedrihm has no apparent connection with the man, Dalt shrugs it off. “Maybe the Force wanted you to see it.” But Dalt’s “reasonably certain” there aren’t any other side effects he should know about. Though he breaks into a grin as he says it, which Kedrihm doesn’t find to be especially reassuring.
Oola has done alarming things with that droid. Truly alarming, and they probably won’t learn the full extent till they see the thing in action. SARR seems to be accepting it placidly enough. Which is good, because the last thing they need at this point is a droid-fight between a smart ex-destroyer droid and a…a SARR.
Well. Now that all that business is taken care of, it’s off to Yavin IV.
Sure enough, Oola spots a signal coming from one of the decorations. There’s a listening device hidden in a Naboo sculpture that the Naboo contingent had given the Jedi as a gift. The signal leads back to the Senate building. Oola heads over there with Ree tagging along, and finds it leads to the offices of Dev Miat, the Naboo Senator. Ree tells Luke, who says to leave it there and learn more about Miat. Oola suggests using the bug to pass false information.
Erin tells them that Miat is the leading pacifist in the Senate. He’s the one who’s been blocking actions against the Thule, along with his small but influential clique. He’s been in the Senate almost since it reformed. Oola’s brother says he’s a really wonderful guy. Very idealistic. Even Oola’s brother has trouble imagining him being a traitor.
They decide to sneak in to look around. Disguising themselves as janitors, they find the signal leading to a receiver in the desk of Cyndel Kenar, who’s one of Miat’s aides. She’s in charge of domestic relations for his group, which means she sent the gift. Erin tells them Kenar comes from a prominent Naboo noble lineage. They’ll have to go to Naboo for more, as there’s apparently something odd about her family. Luke suggests they be delicate, since this could impact diplomatic relations.
Interesting place, Naboo. Not only did they follow Severan Telik there, and find a secret lab of the Emperor’s, but Dalt’s also got a base there. Speaking of which, Kedrihm swings by to ask Dalt about it before they go.
Dalt says that he used that base for personal work, not for the Emperor. Also mentions that the Corporate Sector base holds many of his more marketable inventions. Kedrihm comments about how many of their leads head to Naboo. Dalt: “Something about Naboo...” There’s something about Naboo, but he can’t remember. Says the memories are coming back slowly (oh, the memories are coming back? There's something to mark). Anyway, when Kedrihm asks about Palpatine’s people, Dalt says he thinks the Emperor killed all his family. He knows the Kenars a little from diplomatic parties and whatnot: very into history, always involved with the monarchy (Dalt mocks the idea of an elected monarchy, which also has Kedrihm confused, as the language seems to contradict). The Kenars have served as rulers for hundreds of years.
On the way out, Kedrihm swings by Kyp to suggest that they might consider letting Dalt help with Grievous. It’s unlikely to teach him anything new in cybernetics, but it could give him a distraction. Kyp seems inclined to think about it.
On beautiful Naboo, Onna hunts up info on the Kenar family while the others track down Dalt’s lab. Not hard, since he told them where it was. It’s in a big warehouse, housing a Naboo starship. The thing doesn’t work, but the pilot chair features a control helmet that’s an amplifier for Force illusions. The ship’s also rigged to produce multiple false transponder and radar signals: the ultimate camouflage ship. The rest of the place houses similar experiments in using the Force to enhance existing technology. Oddly, there’s nothing the least bit harmful in the entire place. Did Dalt just hang out here…or did he hide the more alarming stuff from prying Naboo do-gooder eyes?
They indeed find a secret compartment in the floor. It’s trapped with an odd gas, and contains a box locked so it can be opened by Dalt’s genetic signature...but only if Dalt’s in a state of heightened distress. The box holds journals, pictures of his family, and his lightsaber. The journal simply holds logs about building the stuff on the ship and the reasoning behind incorporating the Force into technology. They take all that, along with the control headset from the ship.
Catch up to Onna and SARR. They’ve found a picture of a regal older man with his arm around a young Palpatine. The man was Prince of Theed (a diplomatic position concerned with training young people into politics) Teras Kenar, Cyndel’s great-grandfather. After noting that Palpatine got into politics very young, even by Naboo standards, Onna tells them that Teras was a more than upstanding citizen. He died of a heart attack around the age of 60, and was found by Palpatine, who was 20 at the time. Most of the Kenar children died in accidents within the next 10 years. The family nearly died out. After the Emperor was reported dead—within days—Noah Kenar came forward with proof that he was related to the family. He’s Cyndel’s dad. But he died 3 years ago, just before Cyndel entered politics. Again, she’s the one who found the body.
They decide to go talk to Cyndel’s family, presenting it as a research interest. They tell them more about Teras. He was practically idolized in his own time as a saint. Always helping people, doing medical research, concerned with healing skills. They think he would’ve been a doctor if he weren’t a politician. His private library is held at the museum. They check that out and find a secret compartment on the underside of his desk that’s gooey with badness. It holds a vid, which they take to the ship to watch.
The vid shows Teras and Palpatine doing Sithy things. They refer to each other as Plagius (Teras) and Sidious (Palpatine, of course). They’re working on dead bodies, which mostly don’t do anything and which they declare as failures, until one finally gets up, to the horror of the Starwind’s crew. At this, Teras exclaims that it’s “only a step from this to creating life!”
And now it’s obviously time to questin Cyndel. They call Luke and tell him they found Palpatine’s master. “Alive?!” exclaims Luke, sitting up and reaching for his lightsaber. “No, no.” They explain a little; he says to head back and they’ll talk.
On the way, Oola finds that the gas was knockout gas designed to work specifically on Dalt. What is up with this? And Lydia recalls the story about how Anakin Skywalker “had no parents.” What if that was true? What if Palpatine figured out how to...make people?
When they get back, Luke hauls the Council into Kyp’s room to avoid the listening device so he can inform everyone. Kyp’s annoyed by the invasion. They give Dalt his stuff (except the lightsaber and ship thingie). Dalt’s vaguely suspicious, but doesn’t react particularly oddly. Away from him, Z wonders what to do if Dalt tries to kill his clone. Which one should be living as Lexi’s father? Who has the right? What about his family’s opinions?
SARR interrupts: “Alarms all over the Senate building.” Ree breaks for the door, Kedrihm close on her heels. The hubbub is coming from Cyndel’s office. Her desk is cleaned out, the place is a wreck, and two people are dead: one by lightsaber, one burned to ash. The window is shattered. Ree leaps out, Kedrihm behind her, and they both feel a trail of taint in the Force. Not just Dark Side—it feels like Sith.
Oola gets the Senate’s security tapes: Cyndel at her desk, spaced out like a farseeing trance at lunch. She comes to, Force lightnings the aide who comes in with a cheery greeting, pops a lightsaber out of her desk and bisects another, then digs up some things and flees.
Ree traces her to the Naboo consulate. No one answers her hail. Oola says she sees no lifesigns inside, so Ree and Kedrihm hop the fence and go in. Lightsaber marks all over. Oola taps the security tapes there to see that she tore in, killed people, grabbed some stuff, and fled in a speeder. They follow in a second speeder. Her trail leads to the nearest spaceport. Ree grabs the closest official: “Close down the spaceport, there’s a Sith on the loose!” Then they sneak onto the ship Cyndel got onto, tracking her to her suite...where she’s on the ceiling. Attack!
Ree shouts at passengers to get down. Kedrihm helps clear them out while she takes on Cyndel. Ree notes that Cyndel is protecting her backpack excessively. The ship begins to move as they fight, though it was supposed to be stopped. Cyndel tugs away Ree’s lightsaber with the Force, but Ree just pulls out another one and cuts the pack off her. A black book tumbles out.
Meanwhile, Oola can’t stop the ship—-the pilots have control—-so Kedrihm heads toward the cockpit. The door is locked down, maximum security. He squares himself, then tears the door out. The pilots inside are shocked, but won’t stop the ship. ”The lady told us to take off,” they keep saying. Kedrihm can’t break the mind effect, so he simply pulls them away from the console and leaves it to Oola.
Cyndel flees, Ree chases. Oola drives the ship in circles since she can’t make it stop. Cyndel breaks Ree’s borrowed lightsaber, so Ree pulls out another, much to Cyndel’s disgust. Ree comms to Kedrihm about the evil Sith book lying in the compartment. He knocks the pilots out and heads back for it, but when he enters the compartment, the book starts speaking to him, tempting him with promises of knowledge to help his people and stop Thule. He manages to shake it off and drops it into one of Cyndel’s suitcases.
Oola brings the ship back in to land not too far from the spaceport, to Cyndel’s great frustration. She leaps off, Ree following, and they both land on a passing speeder. Ree sets herself to protect the driver.
Oola spots people from the temple heading to the Senate. It occurs to her to wonder how SARR knew so quickly that something was happening. Kyp’s sitting watch on the comm, so she fills him in and he heads toward the spaceport to give Ree backup.
Cyndel cuts the speeder in half, falling away from Ree. Ree grabs the driver and leaps to another speeder, where she shoves him into the passenger seat, then takes off after Cyndel.
Kedrihm gets off the ship when it comes to a stop, but the area’s completely empty and he has a really bad feeling. Someone bad is standing in the shadow of an alley. Someone bad, angry, and Zabrak. He comms Oola: “Oola...I think Drath is watching me.” She tells Kyp, who’s very alarmed for a different reason. He heads back to the temple to check on Anakin.
Cyndel flees into a casino, where Ree follows, warning security that there’s a dangerous person insde.
The case flies out of Kedrihm’s hand. He grabs it again and gets pulled along for the ride, swinging a kick at Drath as he gets close enough. “Do you have a lightsaber?” asks Drath. “Too bad for you.” But he doesn't quite manage to Force lightning Kedrihm.
The casino’s dark and confusing. Ree can’t spot Cyndel at first, till she hears a whistle and turns to see Cyndel standing atop the bar. The bottles of liquor on the shelves behind her shiver into glass splinters and a rain of alcohol, and Cyndel holds out a lit match..which she drops.
Kedrihm attacks, driving Drath backward off the edge of the platform. Neither will let go of the suitcase, so Kedrihm falls with him, coming down feet-first on top of Drath as they land.
Ree trusts the fire suppression system to do its job, gunning for Cyndel instead, throwing her across the room. Oola gets to the casino in time to see Ree cut off Cyndel’s arm with her lightsaber. The shock makes the Sith pass out.
Drath and Kedrihm square off while Z catches up to them, but they keep leaping and rolling off the platforms, so he has trouble keeping up. Drath manages to yank the case from Kedrihm’s hands and leaps down, but Kedrihm follows him and pulls it back. Then Drath knocks him over the edge of the next platform before Kedrihm can get a good grasp on the case, and they both tumble, to coming up fighting over the suitcase. Drath rips the case out of Kedrihm’s hands, sending it flying over the edge as they both lose their grip. Drath makes to leap after it, but Kedrihm kicks him backward. Drath, looking startled, exclaims, “Book!” Kedrihm calls out, “Z, get it!” Z dives, but Drath catches his foot on the way past. Kedrihm punches Drath in the face so he staggers back from Z, but he grabs Kedrihm’Val and they both go over the edge. Leaping for the suitcase, they both snag it at the same time...and Drath thumbs the lock, sending clothes flying and the book tumbling out. As much to get away from the damned thing as anything, Kedrihm Force-pushes Drath over the edge and follows him down, keeping him from getting back up to the book while Z retrieves it. Drath calls Z’s flechette launcher to him, aiming it at Kedrihm’Val, who flips out of the way and drains its energy away. So Drath clubs him with it instead, then tries to Force-grip Kedrihm’Val’s balls...which he just manages to negate (thankfully).
Drath looks up to see Z making away with the book safely tucked back in the suitcase, and shouts, “Are you too much of a coward to face me?” Seeing Z hesitate, Kedrihm calls, “Just think how frustrated he’ll be if you get away with it.” “Coward not to face me!” Drath snarls, seeing Z start to turn away. Z stops again, then says reluctantly, “This thing is important, isn’t it?” He sighs when Kedrihm nods, then Oola calls on the comm, “Z, I need you here!”
Kedrihm tackles Drath to the ground to make sure he can’t follow Z. “Gay,” mutters Drath, but Kedrihm’Val doesn’t care about those sorts of insults, and replies, “Whatever you like,” knowing it’ll irritate him. Of course, that backfires when Drath bites his ear off. Kedrihm’Val snarls in pain, then nerve-pinches him, knocking him unconscious.
About that time, Ree and Kyp get there, having seen the two of them fight-falling down through Coruscant. Ree helps Kedrihm with his ear while he catches his breath. Kyp tells them that no one escaped except for Drath. He’s fairly impressed, actually: the Jedi prison ship holds Force users by essentially depriving them of environment, forcing them into Force hibernation. Drath’s just such a brute that he could endure that long enough to get out.
Safely back at the temple with the evil book and two new prisoners, they have to figure out what to do with the thing. Kedrihm: “Can anyone else hear it talking to them?” Others: “No.” Kyp: “Yes.” They look at him. Oola: “It’s just a ‘you guys’ thing, I guess.” Z asks, “Will it shut up if I threaten it with my stream of justice?” Ree’s aghast, but it does indeed shut up. Which makes it even more creepy, since apparently that means it’s somewhat sentient. So Kyp just lightsabers the blasted thing.
Oola shows off her new droid to Dalt (she converted the destroyer droid into an astromech, but kept it in the same body with an assortment of weapons), who thinks it’s pretty cool. But he wonders what’s with this crew and alarming droids.
The next morning, Kyp is overjoyed about the possibilities for movies. Ree’s all over the news, which talks about almost nothing but how she chased down a Sith in the spaceport. Kedrihm’Val and Z are getting good coverage, too, much to the joy of the producers of the new “Primal Justice” holo-show. Ree still doesn’t like the movies, since she thinks it fosters the wrong impression about Jedi. She’s uncomfortable with the public idolizing them like they can do no wrong. She tells Kyp she thinks that the Jedi should do some community service so that people can get to know them better as people and be less intimidated by them. “Except for Luke,” Kyp says. “Luke is intimidating.”
Onto other business. Kyp tells them that apparently Dooku founded Thule, which may be house Ventress got out there. The old computer core doesn’t hold much else on the Uncharted Territories: just information on Outbound Flight and a bit about the Chiss. There is a bit of interesting data on the Infinity Gate, however. They already know it’s a powerful Architect artifact, but apparently what the Architects used it for was as a power source for their other technology: the planet movers and so on. So, it was on Dathomir, and the Sith tower holds a synchronous position between it and Yavin. Then (other than the old Sith temples) what’s up with Yavin? Kyp doesn’t know.
Well, they need to go to Yavin IV anyway, to talk to the Dathomiri students and see what they can learn from them about Dathomir. Thrawn and the Republic are finally ready to square off with Thule (well, Thrawn’s been ready), so the crew’s job is to keep Thule away from whatever it is they’re actually after. And that probably means Dathomir. So Ree wants to fill in their gaps on what they know about the planet and her aunt’s setup there so they can go in prepared.
Before they leave, Kedrihm asks Dalt about that gunk he got injected with on Abindosan a while back. Why did he keep seeing visions of Darth Maul? Since Kedrihm has no apparent connection with the man, Dalt shrugs it off. “Maybe the Force wanted you to see it.” But Dalt’s “reasonably certain” there aren’t any other side effects he should know about. Though he breaks into a grin as he says it, which Kedrihm doesn’t find to be especially reassuring.
Oola has done alarming things with that droid. Truly alarming, and they probably won’t learn the full extent till they see the thing in action. SARR seems to be accepting it placidly enough. Which is good, because the last thing they need at this point is a droid-fight between a smart ex-destroyer droid and a…a SARR.
Well. Now that all that business is taken care of, it’s off to Yavin IV.
Grievous Bodily Harm
Ree tells the Council she wants to tell Dalt about his history. They agree, so she volunteers Kedrihm'Val and Oola for it. He likes them, after all.
Dalt’s skeptical about the information. He doesn't like the idea of being related to the crackpot woman on Dathomir, so he insists on double-checking the evidence to prove it. They let him coordinate scientists in running some verifying tests on Jude’s DNA, and he's disappointed to learn it's true.
He tells them more about Mora: she’s feral, believes that the way of Force is to kill or be killed. She’s been trying to fix the Infinity Gate, but he scoffs that she can’t do it without him. It’s Architect technology. How does he know so much about Architect tech? asks Kedrihm. Dalt shrugs and says he’s just a genius. It comes to him. He goes on briefly about what a great gift to the galaxy he is. Kedrihm agrees (quite honestly) that Dalt is certainly unique and has changed the galaxy, which pleases Dalt. Dalt wonders aloud what Ree’ll do about Mora (he's pleasantly surprised when they say Ree hasn’t said anything about redeeming her), and wants to go to Dathomir with them.
Ree does intend on trying to redeem her aunt, of course, but she hasn't spoken to the others about it.
Speaking of whome, an intruder on her balcony wakes Ree up that night. The person tags her with a dart then flies away with a rocket pack. The armor reminds her of Mandalorian armor, but it isn’t. She goes to med bay to get checked. The dart had some kind of tracker fluid in it. The medics are able to clean most of it out of her, but it takes a couple of hours.
Ree goes back to bed. When she feels odd lumps under pillow, she leaps up and finds that it's a mine. She tosses it out her window, where it explodes in a shower of confetti and a party horn. This is so weird it makes Ree nervous.
She tells the others at breakfast. No one knows what to make of it. Z thinks it’s just to shake her up. He suggests that she check temple security tapes, where he recognizes it as ARC trooper armor: a full set, in good condition. He’s upset someone got past his balcony traps. Wants to put deadly animals on her balcony. Maybe a Mynock. Ree: “Mynocks don’t breathe air!” Z: “C’mon, one dead Mynock.” “No!”
Anyway. Ree wants to go to Tatooine and get the buried thing.
They get there to find a hole where the gizmo was. Ree: “Is there any way to track this thing?” Z: “Well, I am a bounty hunter.” The tracks lead to the old Skywalker place. Ree reminds them that Luke sold the place to neighbors, and they might not like intruders.
And speak of the devil. Danger sense! Someone shoots at them, but not well. Ree charges the building to draw fire while the others come in behind. Z rams the guy with his jetpack. It’s the stupid Rodian. He hid the core in the kitchen, where it’s stuffed into the breadbox. He also raided the fridge. Happily, no one’s at home.
The Rodian says soldiers at the cantina hired him--Thule soliders, by his description. He keeps begging them to give the core back. Oola and Z have a plan: plant info on a fake computer core that’ll lead the Thule into a trap. The Rodian’s fine with that, so long as he gets paid. Kedrihm’s worried about the Rodian remembering them, so Ree does the honors, and Rodian trots off in happy oblivion.
The fake core tells Oola what the Thule are doing with it. They’re looking for particular files: Infinity Gate, Uncharted Territories, Count Dooku. A memo that Palpatine had stored in the Senate that the jedi found just before the Purge.
Oola digs that last one out of the real core: on Utapau, in a cavern, there’s a duplicate Grievous body. They don’t know if it auto-activated or if someone would have to go down and boot him up (maybe this is what Obi Wan said the Sents dug up).
Ree calls Kyp, who’s happy about the core...til he hears what the Thule are after. He says he’ll call together the Council-- Kedrihm'Val halts him and asks how Thule knew where to find the core. Only they and the Council knew about it. So is this the leak they’d theorized about? Kyp keeps it in mind, says to rendezvous with people he’ll send to meet them on Utapau.
The Utapaui really like Jedi. The crew hangs out, waiting for Kyp's people. On the second day, Ree’s comm beeps with an incoming text message. It says there are Thule agents on location on Utapau. No sign of who sent it. Oola traces the signal and finds it's coming from Bimm. Could be Zann, but whomever it is, SARR points out that they went to quite a risk in sending that message.
Ree calls Kyp, who’s in transit. Oola checks the Starwind and their own comms to make sure no one snuck listening devices in or anything, but they’re clean. Then Ree sets Z and Kedrihm on the Thule agents.
Z and Kedrihm find six Thule operatives taking orders from an ominously hooded type. Another hooded, ridiculously large (8 foot tall) person behaves like the first one’s apprentice. He looks kind of like a wolfman and has a lightsaber. The Thule have a map with 3 locations, one of which is right. Z goes ahead to plant mines while Kedrihm heads back to tell the others. Ree briefs Kyp, and realizes he’s on the Falcon. Lydia thinks they’d better tell Z to use stun mines, because he’ll probably use explosives otherwise.
They catch up with him in the tunnels ahead of the bad guys, and hide to ambush them in case stun mines don’t bring them down. Z says he planted explosives beyond the stun mines as a backup plan, to block the entrance.
The bad guys come in—-the big Sith and two soldiers. One gets knocked out by the mines, the second is staggered. The big thing is unfazed. Z blows the secondary mines, caving in the tunnel beyond them. Kedrihm telekineses a rock at the second soldier’s head to knock him out. Lydia and Ree move in on the big Sith, who throws an unconscious soldier at Kedrihm, then telepathically sends a message out. Probably for backup, since three more troops come in. Oola, hiding by the cave mouth, puts up an electrified wire: one soldier gets knocked out, one trips, he third makes it. She knifes him. Z motions “watching you” to him.
The Sith shoots an electrified net from the pommel of his lightsaber, which catches Lydia. Z takes out the soldier. While Kedrihm knocks out a soldier who was getting up, Ree takes on the Sith, who’s really annoyed about the useless ‘help.’
Ree: “Sure you don’t want to surrender?”
Sith: *eloquent look*
Ree: “Just being polite.”
Sith: “I thank you for that.”
Oola conks out the soldier who was thrown at Kedrihm, who’s getting back up. The Sith sighs, then rushes Ree, who gets knocked back. Lydia cuts herself loose. Oola's knife-droids latch onto the Sith's ankles and start stabbing.
Then someone from outside catches up the three soldiers lying at the cave mouth and hurls them about the room like blowing leaves. One crashes into Kedrihm, who lobs him into the big Sith, who’s staggered back. Ree takes the opportunity to attack, cutting the Sith nearly in half. Startlingly, that doesn’t kill him, though he’s pretty well incapacitated.
A thermal detonator rolls into the cave. Z throws it back out. It explodes, but the tunnel roof holds. Lydia Force Stuns the big Sith while Ree peeks outside. Two lightsabers swing at her from the cloud of dust. It’s the second cloaked figure: a freaky-looking bald lady in a black leather skirt. Oola rolls droids at her, which nail her but good. Seeing her staggered, Kedrihm Force Lights her, which catches her off guard and knocks her out.
They cuff up the Siths. Lydia makes sure the big one won’t die. Another of the soldiers is also a Force user, so they wrap him up, stuff the three Force users in the med bay for SARR to watch over, and call the Utapaui authorities to take care of the rest. Ree recognizes the girl: Asajj Ventress, a Dark Sider who served as Dooku’s apprentice for a time. Apparently she ran to hide out on Thule.
Kyp, Han, and Chewie arrive, and they head out to deal with Grievous.
On their way through the tunnels, they encounter MagnaGuards: three of them. Kyp leaps over them to take one on. Ree and Lydia confront the other two. Han blows the crap out of one, though it doesn’t quite go down. Z throws two blue, blinking balls at the droids: ion grenades. One succumbs. Kedrihm drains energy from the other, which Ree nails again. Oola’s knife droid finishes that off, and Kyp takes out his. Z and Kedrihm each grab one of the staves those things carried.
They head further in, down some rock-hewn stairs into a huge cybernetics lab. Looks like it’s where Grievous and his people hid out. As they pass, a destroyer droid falls off its pedestal. Startles them all, but it’s not activated. Kyp: “That seems ominous.” Oola scopes the place out. It’s still in working order. There’s an old message from Palpatine on the comm system, warning that Obi Wan is headed that way. Apparently they never got it. She digs up a map of the cave and shuts down the active security systems.
Living quarters on the left housed the techs. On the right are opulent quarters that Grievous apparently used, for whatever reason. Four lightsabers still hang in the wardrobe. Ree grabs those. The next lab is specifically for Grievous’s use. Kedrihm finds cloned organs for him and is horrified at the idea of a living being trapping itself in technology that way.
The final room holds what they came for: a Grievous chassis in a tank, organs and all. As they enter, his eyes shift toward them: he’s awake. Ree: “Oola, make sure that doesn’t get out.”
Too late! He comes busting out of the tank. Lightsabers ignite all around. After Grievous pulls out four, Kyp TKs two more from his own belt, setting them hovering above him, and pulls out a fourth, attaching it to his saber’s hilt to form a dual blade.
Ree cuts off one of Grievous’ arms. While he’s preoccupied with the three Jedi, Han blasts him three good shots in the chest. Kyp runs him through with one of the telekinetic lightsabers.
The others hear something coming from behind. It’s the dumb Rodian again, being chased by a big cave lizard. Z shoots the beast while Oola slips around it, heading for the destroyer droid back in the corridor.
Up front, Grievous fires up his repulsors and picks up lightsabers in his feet. Onna: “He’s got ass lifters?” She grabs Z’s ion rifle and misses with it.
Kedrihm calms the cave beast, but then the Rodian shoots it again. Chewie picks him up to keep him out of their way.
Grievous starts spinning his blades. Ree chucks a crate at him, which knocks him off-balance, then Kyp bounces him off the ground with the Force, knocking him over. Onna stuns him with the ion rifle, giving the Jedi an opening. Ree takes off his left shoulder, Kyp gets his right.
Kedrihm can’t whammy the beast again, so Z shoots it with pepper spray, which drives it off. Kedrihm: “Oola, make way!” Oola: “Yeep! Should I pursue?” Kedrihm to the Rodian: “What did you do to it?” Rodian: “I was just stealing some eggs.” Kedrihm to Oola: “Leave it alone.”
Grievous gets back up, balancing on one foot. Kyp: “That looks ridiculous.” Grevious doesn’t like to be mocked. He nails Ree and Kyp, then Kyp takes control of one of his arms and makes him start stabbing himself, which finally takes him out.
Ree has them take the remnants back, says he represents great advances in cybernetics that could be used to help people. They set the Rodian loose and head back to Coruscant with two Sith, five operatives, a Grievous carcass and Oola’s new pet destroyer droid.
Dalt’s skeptical about the information. He doesn't like the idea of being related to the crackpot woman on Dathomir, so he insists on double-checking the evidence to prove it. They let him coordinate scientists in running some verifying tests on Jude’s DNA, and he's disappointed to learn it's true.
He tells them more about Mora: she’s feral, believes that the way of Force is to kill or be killed. She’s been trying to fix the Infinity Gate, but he scoffs that she can’t do it without him. It’s Architect technology. How does he know so much about Architect tech? asks Kedrihm. Dalt shrugs and says he’s just a genius. It comes to him. He goes on briefly about what a great gift to the galaxy he is. Kedrihm agrees (quite honestly) that Dalt is certainly unique and has changed the galaxy, which pleases Dalt. Dalt wonders aloud what Ree’ll do about Mora (he's pleasantly surprised when they say Ree hasn’t said anything about redeeming her), and wants to go to Dathomir with them.
Ree does intend on trying to redeem her aunt, of course, but she hasn't spoken to the others about it.
Speaking of whome, an intruder on her balcony wakes Ree up that night. The person tags her with a dart then flies away with a rocket pack. The armor reminds her of Mandalorian armor, but it isn’t. She goes to med bay to get checked. The dart had some kind of tracker fluid in it. The medics are able to clean most of it out of her, but it takes a couple of hours.
Ree goes back to bed. When she feels odd lumps under pillow, she leaps up and finds that it's a mine. She tosses it out her window, where it explodes in a shower of confetti and a party horn. This is so weird it makes Ree nervous.
She tells the others at breakfast. No one knows what to make of it. Z thinks it’s just to shake her up. He suggests that she check temple security tapes, where he recognizes it as ARC trooper armor: a full set, in good condition. He’s upset someone got past his balcony traps. Wants to put deadly animals on her balcony. Maybe a Mynock. Ree: “Mynocks don’t breathe air!” Z: “C’mon, one dead Mynock.” “No!”
Anyway. Ree wants to go to Tatooine and get the buried thing.
They get there to find a hole where the gizmo was. Ree: “Is there any way to track this thing?” Z: “Well, I am a bounty hunter.” The tracks lead to the old Skywalker place. Ree reminds them that Luke sold the place to neighbors, and they might not like intruders.
And speak of the devil. Danger sense! Someone shoots at them, but not well. Ree charges the building to draw fire while the others come in behind. Z rams the guy with his jetpack. It’s the stupid Rodian. He hid the core in the kitchen, where it’s stuffed into the breadbox. He also raided the fridge. Happily, no one’s at home.
The Rodian says soldiers at the cantina hired him--Thule soliders, by his description. He keeps begging them to give the core back. Oola and Z have a plan: plant info on a fake computer core that’ll lead the Thule into a trap. The Rodian’s fine with that, so long as he gets paid. Kedrihm’s worried about the Rodian remembering them, so Ree does the honors, and Rodian trots off in happy oblivion.
The fake core tells Oola what the Thule are doing with it. They’re looking for particular files: Infinity Gate, Uncharted Territories, Count Dooku. A memo that Palpatine had stored in the Senate that the jedi found just before the Purge.
Oola digs that last one out of the real core: on Utapau, in a cavern, there’s a duplicate Grievous body. They don’t know if it auto-activated or if someone would have to go down and boot him up (maybe this is what Obi Wan said the Sents dug up).
Ree calls Kyp, who’s happy about the core...til he hears what the Thule are after. He says he’ll call together the Council-- Kedrihm'Val halts him and asks how Thule knew where to find the core. Only they and the Council knew about it. So is this the leak they’d theorized about? Kyp keeps it in mind, says to rendezvous with people he’ll send to meet them on Utapau.
The Utapaui really like Jedi. The crew hangs out, waiting for Kyp's people. On the second day, Ree’s comm beeps with an incoming text message. It says there are Thule agents on location on Utapau. No sign of who sent it. Oola traces the signal and finds it's coming from Bimm. Could be Zann, but whomever it is, SARR points out that they went to quite a risk in sending that message.
Ree calls Kyp, who’s in transit. Oola checks the Starwind and their own comms to make sure no one snuck listening devices in or anything, but they’re clean. Then Ree sets Z and Kedrihm on the Thule agents.
Z and Kedrihm find six Thule operatives taking orders from an ominously hooded type. Another hooded, ridiculously large (8 foot tall) person behaves like the first one’s apprentice. He looks kind of like a wolfman and has a lightsaber. The Thule have a map with 3 locations, one of which is right. Z goes ahead to plant mines while Kedrihm heads back to tell the others. Ree briefs Kyp, and realizes he’s on the Falcon. Lydia thinks they’d better tell Z to use stun mines, because he’ll probably use explosives otherwise.
They catch up with him in the tunnels ahead of the bad guys, and hide to ambush them in case stun mines don’t bring them down. Z says he planted explosives beyond the stun mines as a backup plan, to block the entrance.
The bad guys come in—-the big Sith and two soldiers. One gets knocked out by the mines, the second is staggered. The big thing is unfazed. Z blows the secondary mines, caving in the tunnel beyond them. Kedrihm telekineses a rock at the second soldier’s head to knock him out. Lydia and Ree move in on the big Sith, who throws an unconscious soldier at Kedrihm, then telepathically sends a message out. Probably for backup, since three more troops come in. Oola, hiding by the cave mouth, puts up an electrified wire: one soldier gets knocked out, one trips, he third makes it. She knifes him. Z motions “watching you” to him.
The Sith shoots an electrified net from the pommel of his lightsaber, which catches Lydia. Z takes out the soldier. While Kedrihm knocks out a soldier who was getting up, Ree takes on the Sith, who’s really annoyed about the useless ‘help.’
Ree: “Sure you don’t want to surrender?”
Sith: *eloquent look*
Ree: “Just being polite.”
Sith: “I thank you for that.”
Oola conks out the soldier who was thrown at Kedrihm, who’s getting back up. The Sith sighs, then rushes Ree, who gets knocked back. Lydia cuts herself loose. Oola's knife-droids latch onto the Sith's ankles and start stabbing.
Then someone from outside catches up the three soldiers lying at the cave mouth and hurls them about the room like blowing leaves. One crashes into Kedrihm, who lobs him into the big Sith, who’s staggered back. Ree takes the opportunity to attack, cutting the Sith nearly in half. Startlingly, that doesn’t kill him, though he’s pretty well incapacitated.
A thermal detonator rolls into the cave. Z throws it back out. It explodes, but the tunnel roof holds. Lydia Force Stuns the big Sith while Ree peeks outside. Two lightsabers swing at her from the cloud of dust. It’s the second cloaked figure: a freaky-looking bald lady in a black leather skirt. Oola rolls droids at her, which nail her but good. Seeing her staggered, Kedrihm Force Lights her, which catches her off guard and knocks her out.
They cuff up the Siths. Lydia makes sure the big one won’t die. Another of the soldiers is also a Force user, so they wrap him up, stuff the three Force users in the med bay for SARR to watch over, and call the Utapaui authorities to take care of the rest. Ree recognizes the girl: Asajj Ventress, a Dark Sider who served as Dooku’s apprentice for a time. Apparently she ran to hide out on Thule.
Kyp, Han, and Chewie arrive, and they head out to deal with Grievous.
On their way through the tunnels, they encounter MagnaGuards: three of them. Kyp leaps over them to take one on. Ree and Lydia confront the other two. Han blows the crap out of one, though it doesn’t quite go down. Z throws two blue, blinking balls at the droids: ion grenades. One succumbs. Kedrihm drains energy from the other, which Ree nails again. Oola’s knife droid finishes that off, and Kyp takes out his. Z and Kedrihm each grab one of the staves those things carried.
They head further in, down some rock-hewn stairs into a huge cybernetics lab. Looks like it’s where Grievous and his people hid out. As they pass, a destroyer droid falls off its pedestal. Startles them all, but it’s not activated. Kyp: “That seems ominous.” Oola scopes the place out. It’s still in working order. There’s an old message from Palpatine on the comm system, warning that Obi Wan is headed that way. Apparently they never got it. She digs up a map of the cave and shuts down the active security systems.
Living quarters on the left housed the techs. On the right are opulent quarters that Grievous apparently used, for whatever reason. Four lightsabers still hang in the wardrobe. Ree grabs those. The next lab is specifically for Grievous’s use. Kedrihm finds cloned organs for him and is horrified at the idea of a living being trapping itself in technology that way.
The final room holds what they came for: a Grievous chassis in a tank, organs and all. As they enter, his eyes shift toward them: he’s awake. Ree: “Oola, make sure that doesn’t get out.”
Too late! He comes busting out of the tank. Lightsabers ignite all around. After Grievous pulls out four, Kyp TKs two more from his own belt, setting them hovering above him, and pulls out a fourth, attaching it to his saber’s hilt to form a dual blade.
Ree cuts off one of Grievous’ arms. While he’s preoccupied with the three Jedi, Han blasts him three good shots in the chest. Kyp runs him through with one of the telekinetic lightsabers.
The others hear something coming from behind. It’s the dumb Rodian again, being chased by a big cave lizard. Z shoots the beast while Oola slips around it, heading for the destroyer droid back in the corridor.
Up front, Grievous fires up his repulsors and picks up lightsabers in his feet. Onna: “He’s got ass lifters?” She grabs Z’s ion rifle and misses with it.
Kedrihm calms the cave beast, but then the Rodian shoots it again. Chewie picks him up to keep him out of their way.
Grievous starts spinning his blades. Ree chucks a crate at him, which knocks him off-balance, then Kyp bounces him off the ground with the Force, knocking him over. Onna stuns him with the ion rifle, giving the Jedi an opening. Ree takes off his left shoulder, Kyp gets his right.
Kedrihm can’t whammy the beast again, so Z shoots it with pepper spray, which drives it off. Kedrihm: “Oola, make way!” Oola: “Yeep! Should I pursue?” Kedrihm to the Rodian: “What did you do to it?” Rodian: “I was just stealing some eggs.” Kedrihm to Oola: “Leave it alone.”
Grievous gets back up, balancing on one foot. Kyp: “That looks ridiculous.” Grevious doesn’t like to be mocked. He nails Ree and Kyp, then Kyp takes control of one of his arms and makes him start stabbing himself, which finally takes him out.
Ree has them take the remnants back, says he represents great advances in cybernetics that could be used to help people. They set the Rodian loose and head back to Coruscant with two Sith, five operatives, a Grievous carcass and Oola’s new pet destroyer droid.
Catching up on research
Remembering that they've got a missing Force-sensitive boy who was plugged into a Thule engine until recently, Kedrihm'Val learns from Dalt that he had labs on Naboo, in the Corporate Sector, and another hidden space station, where he stowed the boy. Dalt’s a bit reluctant to turn over information on all his bases (“I might need them again.”), and during the conversation comes up with and idea for Jedi-powered cyborg power armor, which he's pretty keen on. He had the kid working on some sort of arm band or wrist device, but can’t remember details. “Glad I left him a lot of food," he comments.
Ree hands notes on her Anakin dreams over to the Jedi librarian, and tells Luke about the vision where she saw him (or Zann, or Kyp) dead in a battle with the Thule. He takes it under advisement. The Ossus librarians are still researching the Sith space station.
They head to the station, which is cloaked with Dalt’s stealth tech. After hailing, they get caught in a tractor beam, and let it pull them in.
The station is a small one. Droids dressed like Imperial Guards come down to escort them up. The droids have boxes that radiate the Force on their arms. The boy, who has no name and doesn't seem to care that much, thinks Vader was a hero, Palpatine and the Jedi are all evil, and is waiting for orders from Dalt. Doesn’t want to come with them. He’s unwilling to believe anything they say, says that it could all be propaganda, but shows no inclination toward harm or even conflict.
They go back to the Starwind and call Dalt, who says that the boxes give droids minor Force powers. He intended them to eventually work for people too, but hasn’t gotten that part to work yet. Dalt gives them a string of numbers that’ll “make him pliable” (conditioning from the boy’s time as a Thule slave). Dalt seems...well, let’s say morally flexible and still a touch megalomaniacal.
They call Luke and talk to SARR, and decide to give the boy the code and explain about the danger from Thule, that he’s not safe out here. He agrees to come, and is surprised when they show no inclination to restrain him or control his behavior on the ship. They put him up at the temple and offer him freedom to roam, but ask him to keep an escort with him if he wanders outside to the city, since it’s huge and can be dangerous in some places. He says he wants to sleep, then talk to Dalt.
Oola talks to Dalt, who wants to know what their plans are for him. He’s bored and annoyed by the idea of them just picking his brains and riding on his coattails. She distracts him for a bit by talking about walking thrones. Later, he wonders why the Republic has allowed Thule to sit there enslaving Bimmisarri. Oola thinks they still distrust Thrawn too much to act. Dalt scoffs at that. He doesn’t find Thrawn scary, he says. He thinks the Republic has been infiltrated by Thule. “You need to go on an unreasoning witch hunt,” he offers, then suggests setting up the infiltrators by having one of the group voice something in public and see if someone tries to eliminate them.
Ree finds Kyp. “I have a bit of a...personal question to ask.” He gives her a wide-eyed, alarmed look, but she just wants to know how to talk someone back from the Dark Side. “You know, a Jedi is probably the worst person to ask,” he says. “I don’t know any who’ve done it.” He says you have to find out why they turned to begin with. They talk about Ree’s aunt. She was adopted at the age of two by her grandfather...what mission was he on? Endek might know. And Ree’s uncle might know what turned his wife, but her family is so reluctant to talk about it, and they keep telling her that it'd hurt him. If she was at all good, Kyp thinks it probably had to do with something happening to her loved ones. He also suggests she ask Dalt, since he knows Mora somewhat.
After lunch, Ree talks to Dalt. He’s sulky on the topic. He says Mora is mean and completely obsessed with power. Barely notices males, and wants females to be little copies of her. Dalt finds her clichéd: “She’s a not-ugly version of Palpatine.” They kept the special students on Dathomir under her tutelage: the children from the Jedi families, along with exceptionally strong Force users. “I think my virile nature intimidated her,” he opines. She is proud of her daughter, Jude, who won’t give her the time of day. Aunt Mora was already on Dathomir when Dalt got there. He doesn’t know what she did between leaving Ree’s planet and his meeting her on Dathomir. It was her idea to kidnap Jedi families and the house symbols were her plan. Dalt figured they'd be useful to him, so he went along with it, but he doesn't know what the house seals were supposed to be fore. Ree thinks Mora might’ve gotten into her granddad’s records and found information about the gate there. He adds that he wants out of his imprisonment. “I’d be willing to be wrong in order to get out.”
Ree sets to work constructing a timeline. She gets sealed records from her planet and finds that there’s one week missing out of a particular month.
Oola’s homesick.
Kedrihm'Val also starts putting together a timeline. He researches the B’omarr monks, hoping to trace the Skywalker medallion. They’re only about 700 years old, one of the first settlers on Tatooine. The coins seem to be about 2000 years old, dating to just after the Ryssand fiasco when most Jedi died and Jedi order reorganized with the Council first forming, but the Skywalker coin far predates the others, and its prophecy seems to have inspired the Jedi to create the rest. So what did the Jedi know about Ree’s planet and the gate? Ree's planet was settled only 300 years ago. Is the gate not from the Jedi?
Erin and Master Roon look through Senate family records, and the crew talks to Sent’s family holocron about Senator Sent’s relationship to his family. They also set Z on Sent to research and learn all he can about him. Kedrihm and Onna tail the Skywalker prophecies, while Ree keeps pursuing information on her planet and the gate.
Oola talks to her brother. He finds Sent frustrating: “Such a politician,” he says. That seems to be a recurring theme around Sent, actually. Sent’s not very remarkable, her brother tells her. The guy doesn’t trust Jedi. He's very conservative, exerting great influence over the traditionalists. He’s been quiet lately, out of the Senate on vacation since his wife is having a child. They’ve gone to their vacation planet, Chandrila. Took their staff with them and everything, so his place is pretty empty. Oola senses opportunity.
Ree's planet was settled 300 years ago. Her family pops up during the colonization, but aren’t accounted for in any transit records. They and the Sins appear on-planet like they’d been there the whole time. There are no records of land distribution to them, aren’t in transport ship manifests. Her family goes back about 10,000 years. She finds that her planet appears on star charts at the founding 300 years ago, but not 400 years ago...but the solar system was on record about 1900 years ago, and her planet was noted then.
The Ossus librarians interrupt Ree's research with some information from the Jedi Temple: the librarian there learned that the Oracle of Pelgrin is apparently meant to guide the Chosen One in bringing balance to the Force. It was built for that purpose. The prophecy waxed and waned in popularity. During times of war and tumoil, they obsessed over it.
Kedrihm and Onna find that the Chosen One prophecy goes back as far as the Jedi do: 25,000 years. Essentially, when the Jedi started writing, that’s what they were writing about. It’s copied exactly the same then as it’s remembered now. Onna wants to know how Luke fits it.
They find a prophecy regarding the family medallions from about 10,000 years ago. It’s a bit fragmented. Says something about a family that didn’t exist then, a brother and sister, a dark father. Says they join the ranks of the other great families in “preserving a way of life.” The Ossus librarians think there’ll be more on that subject at the Jedi temple. One of the librarians mentions to Kedrihm in passing that “the show will be starting soon.” He has no idea what that means.
They head back to the temple and check in on Kyp’s translation of the Sith hieroglyphs from the space station. He’s been keeping Luke distracted from it. Luke's been working on the Sith coffin that held Darth Whatsisname. Kyp says the wall refers to a being known as “The Leader.” Talks about him as the greatest Sith lord ever to exist. He says it reads like an evolutionary chart of Sith greatness. Vader is “the dark lord.” “The Leader” is a different guy. There’s talk about the Dark Lord returning...is that metaphorical or literal? Kyp wonders if it’s all a Sith misinterpretation of the builders’ original intent, which was apparently “something’s coming and Luke needs to be a Sith Lord to face it.” Kedrihm’Val recalls that most of the station didn’t feel particularly evil.
Well...hey, the two Jedi and their droid from the Rakata ship come from a couple thousand years ago, and Jenn is from around 10,000 years ago, right? Also, it might be worth hunting up the Chiss, who said he’d be sticking around on Coruscant for a while. He might’ve explored the logs of some of the older ships. Perhaps there was useful data on those.
Z breaks into the Sent estate, finding nothing but fairly average stuff for a Senator. On the way back, he discovers what the librarian meant about his cryptic words to Kedrihm'Val: there are ads all over for a holo-vid show called “Primal Justice.” It’s produced by a guy named Yurd Pedron and features Z and Kedrihm'Val in a detective partnership format.
The Jedi from the Rakata ship say the Oracle at Pelgrin was there when the Jedi first landed on Pelgrin. The theory about the Oracle helping the Chosen One was popular in their time. The family coins date from about 2000 years ago, based on the Skywalker coin. They were created to help preserve the Order. When asked about the space station and its signal, they say there are rumors of the “true Sith” being out there. Something to do with Darth Revan, but they're not clear on the details.
Their droid--who seems to be privy to more information than the Jedi themselves, or maybe he just has a better memory--remembers one ship that had something dealing with “true Sith” on it. There are always extra prophecies about the Chosen One popping up, and they were housed in the temple’s databanks. But the old records were lost to the Empire. Maybe the Emperor kept copies? Also, Kedrihm’Val reminds them about the database from the Sith lab they found in the swamp. Maybe the Sith had their own prophecies.
Ree asks about her planet. The droid doesn't have much to share that they don't already know, but something about his manner makes it uncertain whether he’s telling them everything. Kedrihm'Val points out that some of the secrets the Jedi kept, they might never have written down. Ree feels pessimistic at that, but the droid chides her, reminding her that the Force will provide. Kedrihm reminds her of Ben and Yoda’s holocrons. The droid believes those two might have squirreled some things away. And Kedrihm wonders suddenly why Maul was on Dagobah after all. Z says that Drath would know.
They find the Chiss lurking about in bars, bemusing himself with human behavior. He says the Chiss have legends of the True Sith. They’re some ancient evil out past the Rim that tried to make inroads by telepathically influencing people in the Old Republic, but they failed so they wait till they’re summoned back.
Oola finds a set of childrens’ storybooks on the ship the droid named. There are Jedi tales about fighting the True Sith from beyond the Rim: hyper-intelligent beings that the catfish Sith are devolved versions of. A book called Tales of Darth Revan tells his story: he's very Luke-like in some ways. He translated all the Sith prophecies and claimed he figured out the Chosen One thing and that it didn’t mean what everyone thought. Only one book is missing from the set: Jedi Prophecies and Folktales.
They can’t find any copies in the libraries or museums. These books date from a bit after the Mandalorian Wars, which is Jenn’s time period. Maybe he remembers having some of those stories read to him? He thinks he remembers seeing one when he was roaming about in an adult body, but it’s all blurry. Something about a bar, or a nightclub?
Turns out, it’s at the Smashed Holocron! They have a copy in their display of Jedi memorabilia. While Ree makes a duplicate, Z gets blitzed in the record time of 1.5 minutes by downing the Full Council. He runs out shouting “LET’S REEEEEEEEEEEAD!” and flies off with his rocket pack.
The book tells about Revan's vision of the Chosen One. It opens with a drawing of little Anakin. “The Chosen One should be this little failure,” Revan writes, "but it's not." The boy was given every chance by the Force but couldn’t overcome his own weakness. He had a vision of the true Chosen One. Though he didn’t see his face, the picture is of a young man in white leathers standing before two setting suns outside a hut in Tatooine’s desert. Revan believes that ‘balance’ is about the nature of Force as it's active in galactic society: in the government, where it should neither rule, nor isolate itself. Luke and Leia are twins who establish this balance through their interaction.
Revan also tells about the True Sith. He says they are from "beyond the stars," presumably meaning from beyond the Galactic Rim. The Sith were an experiment, he says, guided from a distance. The True Sith will take over from the old Sith when they falter, and wipe them away. Maybe this is why the Sith wanted Luke to be their next Sith lord: because he was strong enough to keep the True Sith from destroying their tradition?
Revan’s droid sounds...awfully familiar. HK-47. An awful lot like SARR. On digital steroids.
So anyway, they know that the Sith tower was a farseeing device and a Skywalker shrine before the Sith got to it, and apparently it was meant to call the True Sith back. But the thing was still built by the Architects, and they still don’t know why the Architects were so obsessed over Luke or the True Sith. Why would the Architects want to summon them?
Ree placed a call with Salek Endek a few days earlier. He calls to say he’ll be there in a day or two. Meanwhile, Erin drops in to say that their records show there should be another Sent. Someone’s unaccounted for, and it follows the pattern of those families who tried to hide members from the Emperor.
Z suggests a break. While Oola visits with her family, Ree relaxes...and has a vision. She watches as a young Obi-Wan drops a baby off with a couple and head out into the Jutland Wastelands. He hides a computer core in a box with some Force-sensitive gizmos and buries it. The vision ends...kind of, but Ree can’t shake out of it. After trying briefly, she gives up, muttering, “It’s really warm here.” Shockingly, Obi Wan hears, spinning to face her. “I hate farseeing,” she says by way of explanation. “This is no kind of farseeing I know,” he replies, approaching her. “You need help?” “No, no. This has already been very helpful. In the...future. Uh. I can’t say more.” A satisfied look comes to Obi Wan's face as he assures her, “You’ve said more than enough." Then Ree wakes.
Endek slides into a chair at her table while she’s having breakfast that morning. He doesn’t know much about the senator, through birth records don’t show anything odd (which could be another issue, he comments), but he knows about the Sents. He and her granddad followed a distress beacon to an asteroid field, where they saw a ship crash, pursued by clone troopers. A Jedi gave them the baby and told them to run, then held off the soldiers, but this was shortly before the Purge happened, so they were quite confused. At any rate, the man was a Sent Jedi, and the baby was Ree’s aunt.
Endek says he told her granddad at the time that she was suspiciously quiet for an infant, and that she had shifty eyes. Her grandfather laughed like he'd told a joke, but Endek says, he was quite serious. He wonders if something was in the container with the baby.
When Ree mentions what they’ve been looking into, he reminds her that he’s a tomb raider. he remembers that everyone always told him to ask Yoda when he asked about the True Sith, which he thought was garbage because the backward-talking munchkin never answered a question straight in his very long life. He knows about the Sith tower, and thinks that some Jedi knew about it too. Ree’s confused by that--wouldn't they have told the other Jedi?--but Endek reminds her that while the Master’s Council knew just about everything, other Jedi didn’t always talk. And the Council started acting really weird when they lost the ability to see the future. It was almost as if they didn’t want to make a move move till they could see the outcome.
She asks about the Chosen One prophecy. His exasperated reply: “I have found prophecies on every Jedi wall of every Jedi crapper... Most of them fit your Luke. He’s always fighting some goddamned menace. Or he is some goddamn menace. Or Kyp is a goddamn menace.” Ree's surprised by that too, but apparently blowing up a solar system gets you prophecies.
Speaking of which, he speaks on prophecies: “If there’s anything you need to know about Jedi, it’s that knowing what’s going to happen before it happens always leads to problems. You always try to change it.”
On the Architects: “The Architects were crazy shithouse mad enough to call the True Sith so they could throw down with them. They left because they got bored.” Bored? Yep, bored. they moved planets around, rebuilt the galaxy, created all kinds of superweapons, and eventually just wandered off to find something else to do. But, Endek comments, the galactic society they've got now could trash the Architects. They never had anything like the Skywalkers.
On Imperial propaganda: They painted the Emperor as a grandfatherly old man, they talked up the Imperial fleet as a noble enterprise, they advertised the Death Star as a boarding school for orphans, but “they never tried to make Vader anything other than what he was: a 7-foot-tall house of pain.”
Leading to his opinion on the Skywalkers: Leia seems stable, sure, and Luke's nice enough, but “The Skywalkers are entropy with Force sensitivity.” He suggests Ree not forget that, because things will undoubtedly turn for the worst otherwise.
She asks him what he knows about the gate on her planet. “'Heart of the living Force,' the Jedi called it. What is the living Force, Ree?” He knows it’s something about bringing the dead back to life, but he guesses that to be a metaphor, that it’s a repository of knowledge...but of course, such repositories sometimes house things like superweapons.
They argue over Ree’s fame. She thinks it’s a fad, but he wants her to understand. He takes her out for a couple of hours to show her how famous she really is, and what an inspiration she is to people. “It’s ridiculous? Imagine you’re a kid. Would you drink from a Luke cup? If you had one, would you drink from it every morning at breakfast? ‘Cause I drank from an Anakin cup and he ended up killing people!”
On Ree’s aunt: “I have to at least try to save her. She’s my aunt!” “Oh, yeah, you drank from a Luke glass.” He thinks Mora was jealous of Ree’s mom, who was kind and friendly and popular. Mora intimidated and bossed people. He says that to save her, Ree needs to find something she cared about. She needs someone to be as directly honest with her as possible.
All told, Salek Endek is bitter, snarky, and jaded, and admits it. This, he says, is why he spends more time in tombs than with people. And it becomes clear why Ree's mother holds her opinion of him.
Ree talks to Luke and tells him Dalt’s suspicions about Thule infiltration in the government. Luke ponders that, considering using Dalt as bait (with Dalt’s permission, of course) by nosing about that he’s regaining memories. It would be dangerous...and Ree's not willing to risk Dalt.
Kedrihm'Val asks Dalt about the Force boxes on those droids. How do they work? Dalt seems to have a good idea why he's asking, and explains that the boxes draw in ambient Force energy and collect it, then interface it electrically with the wearer's nervous system so they can use it. This is easy enough to do with droids, but it killed most of the organics he tried it on. Mostly. Pressed further, he admits that he ended up with three cyborged psychopathic possible Force-users after testing those boxes, and gave them to Maul for bodyguards. Speaking of whom, neither Dalt or Kedrihm’Val really think Maul’s dead. Dalt thinks Maul’s gone underground and is being subtle. After all, he was a physical monster of a man, but he was also a genius. Dalt’s very...admiring of Maul. I mean, really admiring. Uncomfortably admiring.
The group decides to ask the Kenobi holocron about the gate. The Jedi don’t seem to like talking about it, but Obi Wan always seemed practical about people needing to know things. And he is, but he mostly repeats what they already know. Says maybe the Emperor got a copy from the recordings in the archives. He's able to tell them a bit more about the Sents, though. He knew the Sent family had a baby girl and an older boy who was a Jedi. The Emperor kept the Sent family distracted, constantly sending them on missions across the galaxy, but he recalls that they did find something at right around the point of the Coruscant invasion.
They thank him and talk to the Sent family holocron. Tal Sent tells them the oldest brother was a Jedi. Dalt and Mora were twins. The Emperor knew about Dalt, but they hid Mora. Raasik Sent is a much younger brother, and the holocron believes that he still has his parents’ diaries.
Z immediately flies off. Realizing what he's got to be heading off to do, Ree shouts at him to come back. An argument ensues. Ree insists it would be illegal and wrong, while Kedrihm'Val points out that it would be recklessly obvious to fly to the Sent house to break in. Z keeps repeating the phrase “stealing the diaries from Sent’s house” till Kedrihm asks why he keeps saying it like that. Onna suddenly exclaims, “That comm is on! Oh god, SARR!” And then everybody starts talking at once. Kedrihm'Val, noticing that SARR’s not really listening to the demands that he not rob the Sents, orders, “SARR! Don’t kill anyone. Don’t harm anyone.” Which, SARR says, sounds like permission to him. The Sent holocron wants the diaries since he says he’s supposed to be an archive of all the family’s history. SARR asks about copying instead of stealing. Oola sends SARR the house codes while everybody argues. Ree starts scolding them all for being immoral, and right in front of her! A moment later, SARR’s voice cuts back in saying, “Download incoming.”
Ree: “You stole them!”
SARR: “No.”
Kedrihm'Val: “He convinced a house droid to copy them.”
SARR: “The kitchen-bot is terrified of me. She won’t squeal.”
The Sent family had a vision about twins saving the galaxy. They assumed that meant Dalt and Mora, so they put it into both their heads that they were important and needed to do important things to save the galaxy. Then they spirited Mora away, but the Emperor got hold of Dalt. Which explains why Mora and Dalt both have inflated senses of importance.
Then they take some time to brief the holocron on Dalt's family on Miraluka. Ree leaves a note with the Council regarding Dalt’s crazed cyborgs and the hidden Maul bases.
Ree hands notes on her Anakin dreams over to the Jedi librarian, and tells Luke about the vision where she saw him (or Zann, or Kyp) dead in a battle with the Thule. He takes it under advisement. The Ossus librarians are still researching the Sith space station.
They head to the station, which is cloaked with Dalt’s stealth tech. After hailing, they get caught in a tractor beam, and let it pull them in.
The station is a small one. Droids dressed like Imperial Guards come down to escort them up. The droids have boxes that radiate the Force on their arms. The boy, who has no name and doesn't seem to care that much, thinks Vader was a hero, Palpatine and the Jedi are all evil, and is waiting for orders from Dalt. Doesn’t want to come with them. He’s unwilling to believe anything they say, says that it could all be propaganda, but shows no inclination toward harm or even conflict.
They go back to the Starwind and call Dalt, who says that the boxes give droids minor Force powers. He intended them to eventually work for people too, but hasn’t gotten that part to work yet. Dalt gives them a string of numbers that’ll “make him pliable” (conditioning from the boy’s time as a Thule slave). Dalt seems...well, let’s say morally flexible and still a touch megalomaniacal.
They call Luke and talk to SARR, and decide to give the boy the code and explain about the danger from Thule, that he’s not safe out here. He agrees to come, and is surprised when they show no inclination to restrain him or control his behavior on the ship. They put him up at the temple and offer him freedom to roam, but ask him to keep an escort with him if he wanders outside to the city, since it’s huge and can be dangerous in some places. He says he wants to sleep, then talk to Dalt.
Oola talks to Dalt, who wants to know what their plans are for him. He’s bored and annoyed by the idea of them just picking his brains and riding on his coattails. She distracts him for a bit by talking about walking thrones. Later, he wonders why the Republic has allowed Thule to sit there enslaving Bimmisarri. Oola thinks they still distrust Thrawn too much to act. Dalt scoffs at that. He doesn’t find Thrawn scary, he says. He thinks the Republic has been infiltrated by Thule. “You need to go on an unreasoning witch hunt,” he offers, then suggests setting up the infiltrators by having one of the group voice something in public and see if someone tries to eliminate them.
Ree finds Kyp. “I have a bit of a...personal question to ask.” He gives her a wide-eyed, alarmed look, but she just wants to know how to talk someone back from the Dark Side. “You know, a Jedi is probably the worst person to ask,” he says. “I don’t know any who’ve done it.” He says you have to find out why they turned to begin with. They talk about Ree’s aunt. She was adopted at the age of two by her grandfather...what mission was he on? Endek might know. And Ree’s uncle might know what turned his wife, but her family is so reluctant to talk about it, and they keep telling her that it'd hurt him. If she was at all good, Kyp thinks it probably had to do with something happening to her loved ones. He also suggests she ask Dalt, since he knows Mora somewhat.
After lunch, Ree talks to Dalt. He’s sulky on the topic. He says Mora is mean and completely obsessed with power. Barely notices males, and wants females to be little copies of her. Dalt finds her clichéd: “She’s a not-ugly version of Palpatine.” They kept the special students on Dathomir under her tutelage: the children from the Jedi families, along with exceptionally strong Force users. “I think my virile nature intimidated her,” he opines. She is proud of her daughter, Jude, who won’t give her the time of day. Aunt Mora was already on Dathomir when Dalt got there. He doesn’t know what she did between leaving Ree’s planet and his meeting her on Dathomir. It was her idea to kidnap Jedi families and the house symbols were her plan. Dalt figured they'd be useful to him, so he went along with it, but he doesn't know what the house seals were supposed to be fore. Ree thinks Mora might’ve gotten into her granddad’s records and found information about the gate there. He adds that he wants out of his imprisonment. “I’d be willing to be wrong in order to get out.”
Ree sets to work constructing a timeline. She gets sealed records from her planet and finds that there’s one week missing out of a particular month.
Oola’s homesick.
Kedrihm'Val also starts putting together a timeline. He researches the B’omarr monks, hoping to trace the Skywalker medallion. They’re only about 700 years old, one of the first settlers on Tatooine. The coins seem to be about 2000 years old, dating to just after the Ryssand fiasco when most Jedi died and Jedi order reorganized with the Council first forming, but the Skywalker coin far predates the others, and its prophecy seems to have inspired the Jedi to create the rest. So what did the Jedi know about Ree’s planet and the gate? Ree's planet was settled only 300 years ago. Is the gate not from the Jedi?
Erin and Master Roon look through Senate family records, and the crew talks to Sent’s family holocron about Senator Sent’s relationship to his family. They also set Z on Sent to research and learn all he can about him. Kedrihm and Onna tail the Skywalker prophecies, while Ree keeps pursuing information on her planet and the gate.
Oola talks to her brother. He finds Sent frustrating: “Such a politician,” he says. That seems to be a recurring theme around Sent, actually. Sent’s not very remarkable, her brother tells her. The guy doesn’t trust Jedi. He's very conservative, exerting great influence over the traditionalists. He’s been quiet lately, out of the Senate on vacation since his wife is having a child. They’ve gone to their vacation planet, Chandrila. Took their staff with them and everything, so his place is pretty empty. Oola senses opportunity.
Ree's planet was settled 300 years ago. Her family pops up during the colonization, but aren’t accounted for in any transit records. They and the Sins appear on-planet like they’d been there the whole time. There are no records of land distribution to them, aren’t in transport ship manifests. Her family goes back about 10,000 years. She finds that her planet appears on star charts at the founding 300 years ago, but not 400 years ago...but the solar system was on record about 1900 years ago, and her planet was noted then.
The Ossus librarians interrupt Ree's research with some information from the Jedi Temple: the librarian there learned that the Oracle of Pelgrin is apparently meant to guide the Chosen One in bringing balance to the Force. It was built for that purpose. The prophecy waxed and waned in popularity. During times of war and tumoil, they obsessed over it.
Kedrihm and Onna find that the Chosen One prophecy goes back as far as the Jedi do: 25,000 years. Essentially, when the Jedi started writing, that’s what they were writing about. It’s copied exactly the same then as it’s remembered now. Onna wants to know how Luke fits it.
They find a prophecy regarding the family medallions from about 10,000 years ago. It’s a bit fragmented. Says something about a family that didn’t exist then, a brother and sister, a dark father. Says they join the ranks of the other great families in “preserving a way of life.” The Ossus librarians think there’ll be more on that subject at the Jedi temple. One of the librarians mentions to Kedrihm in passing that “the show will be starting soon.” He has no idea what that means.
They head back to the temple and check in on Kyp’s translation of the Sith hieroglyphs from the space station. He’s been keeping Luke distracted from it. Luke's been working on the Sith coffin that held Darth Whatsisname. Kyp says the wall refers to a being known as “The Leader.” Talks about him as the greatest Sith lord ever to exist. He says it reads like an evolutionary chart of Sith greatness. Vader is “the dark lord.” “The Leader” is a different guy. There’s talk about the Dark Lord returning...is that metaphorical or literal? Kyp wonders if it’s all a Sith misinterpretation of the builders’ original intent, which was apparently “something’s coming and Luke needs to be a Sith Lord to face it.” Kedrihm’Val recalls that most of the station didn’t feel particularly evil.
Well...hey, the two Jedi and their droid from the Rakata ship come from a couple thousand years ago, and Jenn is from around 10,000 years ago, right? Also, it might be worth hunting up the Chiss, who said he’d be sticking around on Coruscant for a while. He might’ve explored the logs of some of the older ships. Perhaps there was useful data on those.
Z breaks into the Sent estate, finding nothing but fairly average stuff for a Senator. On the way back, he discovers what the librarian meant about his cryptic words to Kedrihm'Val: there are ads all over for a holo-vid show called “Primal Justice.” It’s produced by a guy named Yurd Pedron and features Z and Kedrihm'Val in a detective partnership format.
The Jedi from the Rakata ship say the Oracle at Pelgrin was there when the Jedi first landed on Pelgrin. The theory about the Oracle helping the Chosen One was popular in their time. The family coins date from about 2000 years ago, based on the Skywalker coin. They were created to help preserve the Order. When asked about the space station and its signal, they say there are rumors of the “true Sith” being out there. Something to do with Darth Revan, but they're not clear on the details.
Their droid--who seems to be privy to more information than the Jedi themselves, or maybe he just has a better memory--remembers one ship that had something dealing with “true Sith” on it. There are always extra prophecies about the Chosen One popping up, and they were housed in the temple’s databanks. But the old records were lost to the Empire. Maybe the Emperor kept copies? Also, Kedrihm’Val reminds them about the database from the Sith lab they found in the swamp. Maybe the Sith had their own prophecies.
Ree asks about her planet. The droid doesn't have much to share that they don't already know, but something about his manner makes it uncertain whether he’s telling them everything. Kedrihm'Val points out that some of the secrets the Jedi kept, they might never have written down. Ree feels pessimistic at that, but the droid chides her, reminding her that the Force will provide. Kedrihm reminds her of Ben and Yoda’s holocrons. The droid believes those two might have squirreled some things away. And Kedrihm wonders suddenly why Maul was on Dagobah after all. Z says that Drath would know.
They find the Chiss lurking about in bars, bemusing himself with human behavior. He says the Chiss have legends of the True Sith. They’re some ancient evil out past the Rim that tried to make inroads by telepathically influencing people in the Old Republic, but they failed so they wait till they’re summoned back.
Oola finds a set of childrens’ storybooks on the ship the droid named. There are Jedi tales about fighting the True Sith from beyond the Rim: hyper-intelligent beings that the catfish Sith are devolved versions of. A book called Tales of Darth Revan tells his story: he's very Luke-like in some ways. He translated all the Sith prophecies and claimed he figured out the Chosen One thing and that it didn’t mean what everyone thought. Only one book is missing from the set: Jedi Prophecies and Folktales.
They can’t find any copies in the libraries or museums. These books date from a bit after the Mandalorian Wars, which is Jenn’s time period. Maybe he remembers having some of those stories read to him? He thinks he remembers seeing one when he was roaming about in an adult body, but it’s all blurry. Something about a bar, or a nightclub?
Turns out, it’s at the Smashed Holocron! They have a copy in their display of Jedi memorabilia. While Ree makes a duplicate, Z gets blitzed in the record time of 1.5 minutes by downing the Full Council. He runs out shouting “LET’S REEEEEEEEEEEAD!” and flies off with his rocket pack.
The book tells about Revan's vision of the Chosen One. It opens with a drawing of little Anakin. “The Chosen One should be this little failure,” Revan writes, "but it's not." The boy was given every chance by the Force but couldn’t overcome his own weakness. He had a vision of the true Chosen One. Though he didn’t see his face, the picture is of a young man in white leathers standing before two setting suns outside a hut in Tatooine’s desert. Revan believes that ‘balance’ is about the nature of Force as it's active in galactic society: in the government, where it should neither rule, nor isolate itself. Luke and Leia are twins who establish this balance through their interaction.
Revan also tells about the True Sith. He says they are from "beyond the stars," presumably meaning from beyond the Galactic Rim. The Sith were an experiment, he says, guided from a distance. The True Sith will take over from the old Sith when they falter, and wipe them away. Maybe this is why the Sith wanted Luke to be their next Sith lord: because he was strong enough to keep the True Sith from destroying their tradition?
Revan’s droid sounds...awfully familiar. HK-47. An awful lot like SARR. On digital steroids.
So anyway, they know that the Sith tower was a farseeing device and a Skywalker shrine before the Sith got to it, and apparently it was meant to call the True Sith back. But the thing was still built by the Architects, and they still don’t know why the Architects were so obsessed over Luke or the True Sith. Why would the Architects want to summon them?
Ree placed a call with Salek Endek a few days earlier. He calls to say he’ll be there in a day or two. Meanwhile, Erin drops in to say that their records show there should be another Sent. Someone’s unaccounted for, and it follows the pattern of those families who tried to hide members from the Emperor.
Z suggests a break. While Oola visits with her family, Ree relaxes...and has a vision. She watches as a young Obi-Wan drops a baby off with a couple and head out into the Jutland Wastelands. He hides a computer core in a box with some Force-sensitive gizmos and buries it. The vision ends...kind of, but Ree can’t shake out of it. After trying briefly, she gives up, muttering, “It’s really warm here.” Shockingly, Obi Wan hears, spinning to face her. “I hate farseeing,” she says by way of explanation. “This is no kind of farseeing I know,” he replies, approaching her. “You need help?” “No, no. This has already been very helpful. In the...future. Uh. I can’t say more.” A satisfied look comes to Obi Wan's face as he assures her, “You’ve said more than enough." Then Ree wakes.
Endek slides into a chair at her table while she’s having breakfast that morning. He doesn’t know much about the senator, through birth records don’t show anything odd (which could be another issue, he comments), but he knows about the Sents. He and her granddad followed a distress beacon to an asteroid field, where they saw a ship crash, pursued by clone troopers. A Jedi gave them the baby and told them to run, then held off the soldiers, but this was shortly before the Purge happened, so they were quite confused. At any rate, the man was a Sent Jedi, and the baby was Ree’s aunt.
Endek says he told her granddad at the time that she was suspiciously quiet for an infant, and that she had shifty eyes. Her grandfather laughed like he'd told a joke, but Endek says, he was quite serious. He wonders if something was in the container with the baby.
When Ree mentions what they’ve been looking into, he reminds her that he’s a tomb raider. he remembers that everyone always told him to ask Yoda when he asked about the True Sith, which he thought was garbage because the backward-talking munchkin never answered a question straight in his very long life. He knows about the Sith tower, and thinks that some Jedi knew about it too. Ree’s confused by that--wouldn't they have told the other Jedi?--but Endek reminds her that while the Master’s Council knew just about everything, other Jedi didn’t always talk. And the Council started acting really weird when they lost the ability to see the future. It was almost as if they didn’t want to make a move move till they could see the outcome.
She asks about the Chosen One prophecy. His exasperated reply: “I have found prophecies on every Jedi wall of every Jedi crapper... Most of them fit your Luke. He’s always fighting some goddamned menace. Or he is some goddamn menace. Or Kyp is a goddamn menace.” Ree's surprised by that too, but apparently blowing up a solar system gets you prophecies.
Speaking of which, he speaks on prophecies: “If there’s anything you need to know about Jedi, it’s that knowing what’s going to happen before it happens always leads to problems. You always try to change it.”
On the Architects: “The Architects were crazy shithouse mad enough to call the True Sith so they could throw down with them. They left because they got bored.” Bored? Yep, bored. they moved planets around, rebuilt the galaxy, created all kinds of superweapons, and eventually just wandered off to find something else to do. But, Endek comments, the galactic society they've got now could trash the Architects. They never had anything like the Skywalkers.
On Imperial propaganda: They painted the Emperor as a grandfatherly old man, they talked up the Imperial fleet as a noble enterprise, they advertised the Death Star as a boarding school for orphans, but “they never tried to make Vader anything other than what he was: a 7-foot-tall house of pain.”
Leading to his opinion on the Skywalkers: Leia seems stable, sure, and Luke's nice enough, but “The Skywalkers are entropy with Force sensitivity.” He suggests Ree not forget that, because things will undoubtedly turn for the worst otherwise.
She asks him what he knows about the gate on her planet. “'Heart of the living Force,' the Jedi called it. What is the living Force, Ree?” He knows it’s something about bringing the dead back to life, but he guesses that to be a metaphor, that it’s a repository of knowledge...but of course, such repositories sometimes house things like superweapons.
They argue over Ree’s fame. She thinks it’s a fad, but he wants her to understand. He takes her out for a couple of hours to show her how famous she really is, and what an inspiration she is to people. “It’s ridiculous? Imagine you’re a kid. Would you drink from a Luke cup? If you had one, would you drink from it every morning at breakfast? ‘Cause I drank from an Anakin cup and he ended up killing people!”
On Ree’s aunt: “I have to at least try to save her. She’s my aunt!” “Oh, yeah, you drank from a Luke glass.” He thinks Mora was jealous of Ree’s mom, who was kind and friendly and popular. Mora intimidated and bossed people. He says that to save her, Ree needs to find something she cared about. She needs someone to be as directly honest with her as possible.
All told, Salek Endek is bitter, snarky, and jaded, and admits it. This, he says, is why he spends more time in tombs than with people. And it becomes clear why Ree's mother holds her opinion of him.
Ree talks to Luke and tells him Dalt’s suspicions about Thule infiltration in the government. Luke ponders that, considering using Dalt as bait (with Dalt’s permission, of course) by nosing about that he’s regaining memories. It would be dangerous...and Ree's not willing to risk Dalt.
Kedrihm'Val asks Dalt about the Force boxes on those droids. How do they work? Dalt seems to have a good idea why he's asking, and explains that the boxes draw in ambient Force energy and collect it, then interface it electrically with the wearer's nervous system so they can use it. This is easy enough to do with droids, but it killed most of the organics he tried it on. Mostly. Pressed further, he admits that he ended up with three cyborged psychopathic possible Force-users after testing those boxes, and gave them to Maul for bodyguards. Speaking of whom, neither Dalt or Kedrihm’Val really think Maul’s dead. Dalt thinks Maul’s gone underground and is being subtle. After all, he was a physical monster of a man, but he was also a genius. Dalt’s very...admiring of Maul. I mean, really admiring. Uncomfortably admiring.
The group decides to ask the Kenobi holocron about the gate. The Jedi don’t seem to like talking about it, but Obi Wan always seemed practical about people needing to know things. And he is, but he mostly repeats what they already know. Says maybe the Emperor got a copy from the recordings in the archives. He's able to tell them a bit more about the Sents, though. He knew the Sent family had a baby girl and an older boy who was a Jedi. The Emperor kept the Sent family distracted, constantly sending them on missions across the galaxy, but he recalls that they did find something at right around the point of the Coruscant invasion.
They thank him and talk to the Sent family holocron. Tal Sent tells them the oldest brother was a Jedi. Dalt and Mora were twins. The Emperor knew about Dalt, but they hid Mora. Raasik Sent is a much younger brother, and the holocron believes that he still has his parents’ diaries.
Z immediately flies off. Realizing what he's got to be heading off to do, Ree shouts at him to come back. An argument ensues. Ree insists it would be illegal and wrong, while Kedrihm'Val points out that it would be recklessly obvious to fly to the Sent house to break in. Z keeps repeating the phrase “stealing the diaries from Sent’s house” till Kedrihm asks why he keeps saying it like that. Onna suddenly exclaims, “That comm is on! Oh god, SARR!” And then everybody starts talking at once. Kedrihm'Val, noticing that SARR’s not really listening to the demands that he not rob the Sents, orders, “SARR! Don’t kill anyone. Don’t harm anyone.” Which, SARR says, sounds like permission to him. The Sent holocron wants the diaries since he says he’s supposed to be an archive of all the family’s history. SARR asks about copying instead of stealing. Oola sends SARR the house codes while everybody argues. Ree starts scolding them all for being immoral, and right in front of her! A moment later, SARR’s voice cuts back in saying, “Download incoming.”
Ree: “You stole them!”
SARR: “No.”
Kedrihm'Val: “He convinced a house droid to copy them.”
SARR: “The kitchen-bot is terrified of me. She won’t squeal.”
The Sent family had a vision about twins saving the galaxy. They assumed that meant Dalt and Mora, so they put it into both their heads that they were important and needed to do important things to save the galaxy. Then they spirited Mora away, but the Emperor got hold of Dalt. Which explains why Mora and Dalt both have inflated senses of importance.
Then they take some time to brief the holocron on Dalt's family on Miraluka. Ree leaves a note with the Council regarding Dalt’s crazed cyborgs and the hidden Maul bases.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Oracle at Pelgrin 2: Ree on the Brain
But on the way back, Ree keeps having dreams. The first night, she’s building a protocol droid. The second, she’s pod-racing. She dreams of fleeing up the gangplank of a ship at someone’s orders and being pulled in by a Jedi. One evening, it’s particularly bad, and she wakes up panicked from a dream where someone dies and she’s terribly upset at the funeral.
After she dreams of hurling herself out of a hovercar and hearing someone call out to her by someone else’s name, she starts wondering about calling Luke. But before she makes a decision, she dozes off in her chair (not having slept well in days) and dreams of feeling extremely guilty about something—worried that someone specific will be mad, but going to their rescue…then a battle with all sorts of crazy stuff going down: droids, Genoshans, more Jedi than actually exist at this point, Boba Fett being killed by…Mace Windu? And a young Obi Wan.
At this point, she wakes and makes notes of all the dreams she’s had so far. Next dreams is of a lightsaber duel with Count Dooku alongside Obi-Wan, which really narrows things down.
At breakfast the next morning, a day or so out from Coruscant, Z jokes, “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. It’s cool if you’re dreaming about me, I understand.” Lydia: “Who would want to dream about you? Maybe a woman with a can opener.”
Ree tries to stay awake after that, but she’s been sleeping lousy for days now. She dreams about Anakin’s vision of Padme dying, then recalls talking to Yoda about “letting go” and thinking it’s lousy advice.
When they get to Coruscant, they talk to Cilghal about all this. Cilghal believes Ree synched herself up with Vader’s brain pattern. She’s not sure how to reverse this, but neither of them is happy about seeking advice from Luke. Cilghal says she’ll research it, and Ree decides to talk to Dalt…or have someone talk to him for her.
Dalt points out that the pattern of dreams is dangerous, because Ree’s nearing the point in the sequence where Anakin became Vader. He suggests going back to the Oracle and using it to put things back. When Kedrihm notes that keeping Ree awake the whole time will be an adventure, Dalt insinuatingly suggests that they could take Kyp along. Kedrihm’Val pointedly ignores him, though about half the planet by now probably thinks that Ree and Kyp have a thing.
So they head back, prodding Ree frequently, to try to fix her. When they stick her in the meditation chamber, she has a vision of a battle between the Republic and Thule, and sees a dead Jedi Master. She thinks it’s either Luke, Kyp, or Zann. When they head out from the Oracle again, they spot footprints heading around the side of the tower. Oola checks the cameras on the place, spotting someone coming out of a compartment in the side of the tower and into the building. Some kind of hibernation pod, or a droid? Kedrihm notes the tracks are too heavy for a human. So they head back in, and hustle upstairs when the tower begins to activate.
The door to the meditation chamber is already closed. The droid is downloading a brain pattern into itself. Oola spots the channels that are active...the Emperor! That thing’s gotta die. Once the process finishes, the droid stops at the other side of the door while the crew discusses options for shutting it down. It retrieves a lightsaber from the chair, at which point Oola locks it in and starts to overload it with Ree’s goody-two-shoes Jedi pattern. It tears the door of the hinges and comes out swinging.
The droid kicks at Oola, putting its foot through a panel. Z blows up a few panels trying to shoot it, then zaps it with a cable. Ree and Kedrihm’Val both attack its head and then Z trashes the torso.
Oola shuts down the machine now that its spent about two minutes broadcasting Ree across the galaxy. Luke calls about then, wanting to know if everything’s okay, and if Ree tried to send a telepathic signal. They reassure him. Kedrihm’Val spots Z trying to set charges, for which he gets scolded, but he thinks it’s a bad move to leave the Oracle sitting around like this.
Everyone is creeped out by SARR being exceptionally nice on the way back. “You okay?” Ree asks him. “I’m fine,” he says. “Maybe you need some sleep?” “…No comment on the robot revolution?” Oola asks. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
When they get back to Coruscant, the Council bugs Ree to make sure she didn’t try to send them a signal, because everybody kind of felt one. Great. Imagine: thousands of Rees doing deeds of justice and goodwill across the galaxy.
After she dreams of hurling herself out of a hovercar and hearing someone call out to her by someone else’s name, she starts wondering about calling Luke. But before she makes a decision, she dozes off in her chair (not having slept well in days) and dreams of feeling extremely guilty about something—worried that someone specific will be mad, but going to their rescue…then a battle with all sorts of crazy stuff going down: droids, Genoshans, more Jedi than actually exist at this point, Boba Fett being killed by…Mace Windu? And a young Obi Wan.
At this point, she wakes and makes notes of all the dreams she’s had so far. Next dreams is of a lightsaber duel with Count Dooku alongside Obi-Wan, which really narrows things down.
At breakfast the next morning, a day or so out from Coruscant, Z jokes, “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. It’s cool if you’re dreaming about me, I understand.” Lydia: “Who would want to dream about you? Maybe a woman with a can opener.”
Ree tries to stay awake after that, but she’s been sleeping lousy for days now. She dreams about Anakin’s vision of Padme dying, then recalls talking to Yoda about “letting go” and thinking it’s lousy advice.
When they get to Coruscant, they talk to Cilghal about all this. Cilghal believes Ree synched herself up with Vader’s brain pattern. She’s not sure how to reverse this, but neither of them is happy about seeking advice from Luke. Cilghal says she’ll research it, and Ree decides to talk to Dalt…or have someone talk to him for her.
Dalt points out that the pattern of dreams is dangerous, because Ree’s nearing the point in the sequence where Anakin became Vader. He suggests going back to the Oracle and using it to put things back. When Kedrihm notes that keeping Ree awake the whole time will be an adventure, Dalt insinuatingly suggests that they could take Kyp along. Kedrihm’Val pointedly ignores him, though about half the planet by now probably thinks that Ree and Kyp have a thing.
So they head back, prodding Ree frequently, to try to fix her. When they stick her in the meditation chamber, she has a vision of a battle between the Republic and Thule, and sees a dead Jedi Master. She thinks it’s either Luke, Kyp, or Zann. When they head out from the Oracle again, they spot footprints heading around the side of the tower. Oola checks the cameras on the place, spotting someone coming out of a compartment in the side of the tower and into the building. Some kind of hibernation pod, or a droid? Kedrihm notes the tracks are too heavy for a human. So they head back in, and hustle upstairs when the tower begins to activate.
The door to the meditation chamber is already closed. The droid is downloading a brain pattern into itself. Oola spots the channels that are active...the Emperor! That thing’s gotta die. Once the process finishes, the droid stops at the other side of the door while the crew discusses options for shutting it down. It retrieves a lightsaber from the chair, at which point Oola locks it in and starts to overload it with Ree’s goody-two-shoes Jedi pattern. It tears the door of the hinges and comes out swinging.
The droid kicks at Oola, putting its foot through a panel. Z blows up a few panels trying to shoot it, then zaps it with a cable. Ree and Kedrihm’Val both attack its head and then Z trashes the torso.
Oola shuts down the machine now that its spent about two minutes broadcasting Ree across the galaxy. Luke calls about then, wanting to know if everything’s okay, and if Ree tried to send a telepathic signal. They reassure him. Kedrihm’Val spots Z trying to set charges, for which he gets scolded, but he thinks it’s a bad move to leave the Oracle sitting around like this.
Everyone is creeped out by SARR being exceptionally nice on the way back. “You okay?” Ree asks him. “I’m fine,” he says. “Maybe you need some sleep?” “…No comment on the robot revolution?” Oola asks. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
When they get back to Coruscant, the Council bugs Ree to make sure she didn’t try to send them a signal, because everybody kind of felt one. Great. Imagine: thousands of Rees doing deeds of justice and goodwill across the galaxy.
The Oracle at Pelgrin
After siccing translators on the Sith box and arranging to demodify the modified Jedi prison ship so they can put their growing list of evil-wrong-bad Dark Side prisoners on it, they decide to finally go poke the Oracle at Pelgrin.
First, Ree calls Lexi Cuthas to ask if any family members have gone missing. Lexi’s reluctant to talk about it, but admits that her sister vanished eleven years ago. Her name was Adry, and she was four at the time. One more to add to the kidnapped Jedi list.
The Oracle at Pelgrin was destroyed by the Emperor, who didn’t want anyone else getting their hands on its power. But it was later rebuilt by Dalt, for the Emperor. The crew now believes that the original might’ve been modeled on the Sith tower. The descriptions match in many ways.
So they land on Pelgrin. It’s a bleak, empty place: a planet of calm water, with not a single feature save for the spire of the Oracl. They head inside to find a spiral staircase with room radiating out from it along the walls. Inside the first door they find a room full of machinery. Oola explores, and finds that whole sections of the tower spin and pivot, the mechanisms for which dwell in this room.
Ten floors up, the next door leads to the construction staff’s quarters. Nothing special about it; it’s obviously been empty since the crews finished and left. They do find architectural drawings of the original tower with obvious modifications on them. Oola’s not sure what they do. They’re related to the Force somehow. To a normal engineer’s eye, they look fairly pointless, but they do strike her as somehow familiar. They take the drawings and head upward.
Another ten floors up, it’s an engineer’s area. There are more plans here with modifications on them. Oola thinks they’re for different settings. The original, they know, simply channeled the Force upward to the control room, allowing a Force user to harness it to power their visions. This one almost seems to have settings that function like tumblers in a lock.
At the top, there’s the meditation chamber. Oola looks at the controls while Ree goes inside. The door closes behind her, and to Ree everything seems to go dark: almost sensory-deprivation dark. The others, however, can see her through the windows.
Oola sees about getting the door open, and stumbles on the discovery that different floors align to Dark Side emotions: fear, rage, hate, and two other complex ones she’s hard-put to name. Ree sees that the chair in the meditation chamber has a hookup for a respirator.
Oola and Z see control boards lighting up and one of the weird controls Oola hasn’t placed yet begins to boot up. Kedrihm feels the Force begin to surge. Ree, in the chamber, feels kind of foggy for a moment. Oola gets the door unlocked, but Ree can’t actually see the door, so Lydia pops it open for her from the outside. Kedrihm, focusing on the building Force energies, recognizes it as Vader’s aura.
With that information, Oola realizes that the other two patterns are Vader and the Emperor. This thing was designed to tune them specifically into the Force for more powerful visions.
They’re not sure whether to show this to Dalt or not. They lock the Oracle down, quarantine the planet, and head back to Coruscant.
First, Ree calls Lexi Cuthas to ask if any family members have gone missing. Lexi’s reluctant to talk about it, but admits that her sister vanished eleven years ago. Her name was Adry, and she was four at the time. One more to add to the kidnapped Jedi list.
The Oracle at Pelgrin was destroyed by the Emperor, who didn’t want anyone else getting their hands on its power. But it was later rebuilt by Dalt, for the Emperor. The crew now believes that the original might’ve been modeled on the Sith tower. The descriptions match in many ways.
So they land on Pelgrin. It’s a bleak, empty place: a planet of calm water, with not a single feature save for the spire of the Oracl. They head inside to find a spiral staircase with room radiating out from it along the walls. Inside the first door they find a room full of machinery. Oola explores, and finds that whole sections of the tower spin and pivot, the mechanisms for which dwell in this room.
Ten floors up, the next door leads to the construction staff’s quarters. Nothing special about it; it’s obviously been empty since the crews finished and left. They do find architectural drawings of the original tower with obvious modifications on them. Oola’s not sure what they do. They’re related to the Force somehow. To a normal engineer’s eye, they look fairly pointless, but they do strike her as somehow familiar. They take the drawings and head upward.
Another ten floors up, it’s an engineer’s area. There are more plans here with modifications on them. Oola thinks they’re for different settings. The original, they know, simply channeled the Force upward to the control room, allowing a Force user to harness it to power their visions. This one almost seems to have settings that function like tumblers in a lock.
At the top, there’s the meditation chamber. Oola looks at the controls while Ree goes inside. The door closes behind her, and to Ree everything seems to go dark: almost sensory-deprivation dark. The others, however, can see her through the windows.
Oola sees about getting the door open, and stumbles on the discovery that different floors align to Dark Side emotions: fear, rage, hate, and two other complex ones she’s hard-put to name. Ree sees that the chair in the meditation chamber has a hookup for a respirator.
Oola and Z see control boards lighting up and one of the weird controls Oola hasn’t placed yet begins to boot up. Kedrihm feels the Force begin to surge. Ree, in the chamber, feels kind of foggy for a moment. Oola gets the door unlocked, but Ree can’t actually see the door, so Lydia pops it open for her from the outside. Kedrihm, focusing on the building Force energies, recognizes it as Vader’s aura.
With that information, Oola realizes that the other two patterns are Vader and the Emperor. This thing was designed to tune them specifically into the Force for more powerful visions.
They’re not sure whether to show this to Dalt or not. They lock the Oracle down, quarantine the planet, and head back to Coruscant.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Star Wars art
Well, it's hardly perfect, but I was practicing and I thought, "Well, I've never drawn a picture of Dalt doing Daltish stuff," so I did.
It's kind of huge; sorry about that. I want to do the one of Ree standing in front of the bar as it goes up in flames, but what I want to do with that one is a lot more complex.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
